
Class 5^ JI 
Copyright}! 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Gospel of the Kingdom 

and 

The Gospel of the Church 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



The Problem of Final Destiny in the Light of 

Revised Theological Statement 
i2mo, cloth Price $1.50. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER 

Publisher 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York 



The Gospel of the Kingdom 

and 

The Gospel of the Church 



/ 

By WILLIAM B. BROWN, D.D. 

Author of "The Problem of Final Destiny" Etc. 



"And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues 
and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom." 



i 1 1 < > 



11 > • 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
1903 






THE LIBRARY OF 
GOMGSESS, 

Two Ooh» Receive* 

MAR. 13 1902 

rt C*W**K*HT ENTRY 

CLASd 4fXXc. Ww. 
COPY B 



c. row. 

1J 



COPYEIGHT, 1902, 

By WILLIAM B. BROWN 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK„ 



Dedicatory 



This studeously small volume is affectionately 
dedicated to the author's many friends, living and 
dead, who may, at any period of the last sixty 
years, have been associated with him in his public 
ministry. One practical purpose of the book apart 
from its presentation of the Gospel of the Kingdom 
as related to that of the Church is to enlarge the 
ideal of religion, so that it shall include, not a part 
only, but the whole of human activity and life. 
That the work was written in the eighty-sixth 
year of the author's earthly life affords natural 
ground for self-distrust; but of itself, is not a 
sufficient reason for or against its publication. If 
the subject treated be not interesting, important 
and timely, and one that calls for careful exposi- 
tion ; and if the style of the book is not clear, con- 
cise, consecutive, constructive and convincing, but 
without ornamentation simply for ornamentation's 
sake, — then friends may look upon it with sympa- 
thetic sadness, and the general public with cold 
indifference. The work has this in its commenda- 
tion : It is not an old man's conservatism, nor a 
reminiscence of the past, but an inspiring vision of 
the future, — of the whole world after a long and 
eventful struggle with environment, finally at rest 
in the Gospel of the Kingdom. 



Contents 



CHAP. PJlGI 

i. oue loed's peeaching of the gospel of the 

Kingdom . 9 

II. The Substitution of the Gospel of the Chuech 

FOE THAT OF THE KINGDOM 27 

III. The Good and the Evil that Have Resulted 

FEOM THAT SUBSTITUTION 43 

IV. The Gospel of the Kingdom to Become Uni- 

versal 61 

V. Evolution God's Law of Peogeess and Man's 

Advance into the Kingdom 81 

VI. The Twentieth Centuey Ceisis and the 

Kingdom 97 

VII. A Teue Knowledge of God the Open Dooeway 

into the Kingdom 117 

VIII. Eeligious and Church Agencies that Lead into 

the Kingdom 135 

IX. Agencies foe the Kingdom that Lie Outside of 

the Chuech 155 

X. All the Religions of the Woeld to be Unified 

and haemonized in the gospel of the 
Kingdom 175 

XI. The Gospel of the Kingdom on Eaeth as it is 

in Heaven • • . . . 193 

XII. SUMMAEY AND CONCLUSION . . . , 211 



I. 

OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL 
OF THE KINGDOM. 



OUR lord's preaching of the gospel of the 

KINGDOM. 

The conception of a kingdom, at first imperfectly 
apprehended, in which God is supreme and man is 
subject, is as old as the human race. Religion it- 
self, which is inherent in human nature, presupposes 
such a kingdom. The fragments of ancient annals 
discovered in the last half century, reveal that peo- 
ples centuries older than Moses or Abraham not 
only had their religions and their deities, but they 
recognized the fact of a Theocratic government. 

No thoughtful reader of the first chapters of 
Genesis can fail to see that, in the garden, at the 
opening of human history, the idea of God as King 
and of man as subject was clearly recognized. 
Indeed, this is the central truth brought distinctly 
into view in those chapters. All through the pa- 
triarchal history this conception of a kingdom, and 
of God as King, was, by promises and threatenings, 
by rewards and penalties, so forced upon the atten- 
tion of men that its reality and importance could 

not be misapprehended. 

ll 



12 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

Not the Old Testament alone, but in those early- 
classic writers from Egypt, Babylon, Greece and 
other lands, not less than among the Hebrews, the 
gods were recognized as kings and rulers of men, 
whose favor and protection they sought and to 
whom they professed allegiance. But so far as we 
know, Moses was the first to reduce this universal 
conception of a theocratic kingdom into definite 
written form. The whole Mosaic system was that 
of a Theocracy, in which God was supreme. When, 
centuries later, the people, ambitious to become 
like the other nations, desired a king from among 
themselves they were warned of danger, and 
accused of wishing to substitute for the Theocracy a 
form of government not in accord with the king- 
dom of God. While they denied this they elected 
and crowned Saul as king. Then their misfortunes 
began ; and after many centuries of checkered his- 
tory came the Babylonish captivity. 

All the prophets from the beginning and more 
and more as the centuries passed on, recognized the 
kingdom, and God as King. Daniel, one of the 
latest of the Old Testament writers, foretold the 
coming Messiah who should set up a kingdom and 
whose dominion should be an everlasting dominion. 
This was the same kingdom that had always been 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 13 

recognized, except that God was now to be perso- 
nated in human form. When John the baptizer 
appeared on the outskirts of the wilderness and 
began to deliver his great message, his first words 
were a quotation from Isaiah, — the greatest of the 
prophets, — " Prepare ye the way of the Lord for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And our 
Lord's first deliverance was in the same strain. 
The time He said is fulfilled and the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand. He went throughout Galilee 
preaching the gospel of the kingdom. 

The gospel of the kingdom was ever the central 
theme of our Lord's preaching, and must therefore 
be the central theme of Christianity, the focal point 
towards which all things converge. Sometimes 
Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, at others of 
the kingdom of heaven, and often simply of the 
kingdom, without qualification ; but everywhere 
and continually the kingdom was His theme. No 
word of lesser meaning could contain or express 
the vastness of His thought. About one hundred 
times, mostly in the synoptic gospels, Jesus is re- 
ported to have spoken of the kingdom and to have 
made it the subject of discussion. Several times, 
but in different connections, He compares the king- 
dom to the sowing and growth of seeds ; then it is 



14 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

like a woman putting leaven in her meal, until all 
was leavened ; then again, it was like a grain of 
mustard seed, the smallest of seeds which grew to 
be a tree on whose branches the birds of the air 
could rest. Now it is like a woman searching for 
lost pieces of money ; and then it is like a shepherd 
seeking and finding his lost sheep and rejoicing 
over it. These are only specimens of the many 
similitudes Jesus employed in setting forth the 
nature and work of the kingdom. The kingdom, 
Jesus said to the Pharisees, is within you, meaning 
evidently that the human mind is so configured to 
the Almighty that it needs, and is susceptible of, 
those qualities of heart and life that the kingdom 
provides for and enjoins. 

In many places where the word kingdom is not 
spoken, our Lord's discourses have evident reference 
to it. The whole Sermon on the Mount is an ex- 
position of the principles of the kingdom. What 
He says of Himself as being the vine and His dis- 
ciples the branches ; of His being the shepherd and 
His people the sheep ; of His being the door, the 
way, the truth and the life, are all expositions of 
the kingdom. Our Lord's tender discourse and 
prayer with His disciples extending from the 14th 
to the end of the 17th of John, is a revelation of 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 15 

the spirit of the kingdom. In a word, Christ and 
the gospel of the kingdom is the theme of the four 
gospels. 

Not only is the kingdom coeval and coextensive 
with the human race, and the central theme of the 
gospels, as we have seen, but it is vastly more. Its 
field is the universe, and its principles and their 
operation are as infinite and absolute as is God 
Himself. Not that the principles and workings of 
the kingdom are so absolute as to set aside the 
freedom of moral beings ; for it makes responsible 
beings responsible, and places God over all and 
King forever. 

Turning now from this more general view of the 
subject the question to be considered is : "What did 
our Lord mean by the kingdom as He, in part, un- 
folded it to the people of His day, and as the 
principles He taught involve and unfold it to all 
subsequent ages ? 

It is a law of revelation that the sacred writers 
speak to the people of their own times. As a rule 
they do not speak exhaustively or ideally upon the 
subjects treated, but unfold them only so far as 
those whom they address are able to comprehend 
and accept. Hence the Bible cannot be in all parts 
ideally inerrant. If there be any exception to this 



16 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

rule, it is to be found in the person and teachings of 
Jesus Christ. And yet even here Christ left many- 
things in a state of incompleteness and uncertainty. 
Many of the live questions of to-day He never 
touched upon if, indeed, He ever thought of them. 
Jesus taught great principles as no one else has 
ever thought them; and principles that were not 
comprehended in His own times except in small 
part, and whose meaning and application have been 
unfolding ever since, and will continue to unfold 
while time endures. 

We may not then expect to find the doctrine of 
the kingdom mapped out in full detail in the gos- 
pels, but the seed principles are there, and it is for 
those who come after Jesus to study and apply the 
principles He taught, thus broadening, enlarging 
and clarifying, from one generation to another, the 
world's knowledge of the kingdom. 

First, then, we must not take our understanding 
of the kingdom from the view of it that was held 
by the people of Christ's own day. When Jesus 
came to the Jews they understood neither Him nor 
His teachings. He was regarded by the leaders as 
either an impostor or a madman. Some of the 
common people followed Him in the spirit of idle 
curiosity, some on account of the wonders He per- 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 17 

formed, and others because they thought Him & 
prophet sent from God whose words to them were 
mysteries. He was a mystery to His own family 
who thought Him a victim of some strange halluci- 
nation. Even John in prison was brought into 
doubt, and His very apostles while He lived, did 
not understand Him ; and at His betrayal they for- 
sook Him and fled. Clearly then we cannot take 
our conceptions of the kingdom from what the men 
of Christ's day thought of it. They were incom- 
petent to judge. 

Again, the term religion, not of Scripture origin, 
and the gospel of the kingdom, are not synonymous. 
The two terms have much in common, but that of 
religion includes an amount of form, ceremony, 
perfunctory service, superstition and other such 
things with which the gospel of the kingdom has 
nothing to do. This .gospel cares little for mere 
outward service, and everything for light, love and 
life as the ruling principles of the minds and hearts 
of men. A cold sense of duty and a purpose to 
perform it is better than nothing, but, apart from 
love, it is a legal, slavish service that falls far below 
the gospel ideal as Jesus saw it and as it was ex- 
pounded by Paul. Much of what is called religion 
may be delusion, deception or even a sham ; but, 



18 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

being in the kingdom is to serve God and man from 
love, and this is a joyous, unselfish, restful service. 
It is a life of Christlikeness and so brings freedom, 
peace and gladness to all who enter it ; while much 
that is called religion is only fear and bondage. 

The kingdom that Jesus taught and came to es- 
tablish was no outward, visible organization, civil 
or ecclesiastical, that could be seen, framed and 
operated by men. He said distinctly to Pilate, — I 
am a king, — but immediately added, — My kingdom 
is not of this world. He did not mean that His 
kingdom was wholly out of this world and in some 
other world, but that it was wholly different in 
character and aim from other kingdoms and human 
organizations that then existed. He did not mean 
to depreciate the value of earthly kingdoms, but to 
differentiate His own from them all. 

Jesus came to preach the gospel of the kingdom, 
but not to bring it within the range or limits of 
any visible, tangible organization. His preaching 
was progressive in thought and form, as a compar- 
ison of His earlier with His later discourses reveals. 
Compare, for example, His Sermon on the Mount 
with His last consolatory address and we see 
progress as to detail, but no command or even hint 
of organization. When once His disciples proposed 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 19 

to make Him king in their sense of the term, He 
instantly rejected the suggestion. He sent out His 
disciples to preach the kingdom, but never to or- 
ganize His work or theirs. His last words to His 
disciples, before He ascended were : Go ye into all 
the world and preach the gospel to every creature ; 
but He did not say, — Preach and organize the 
gospel of the kingdom. My point is that Christ's 
conception of the kingdom never included what we 
mean by visible organization for its advancement. 
The only needful organization was in Himself and 
in the principles of the kingdom which He incul- 
cated. Christ is King and Kuler over all who know 
and love Him, and they need no other. When men 
attempt to organize Christ's kingdom and to put its 
management into human hands, the least that can 
be said is that they run without being sent. 

The kingdom as Jesus saw and preached it was 
mainly for this world and not for angels and re- 
deemed spirits in heaven. The same kingdom is 
already consummated in heaven, and Christ came 
to establish it on earth as it was and is in heaven. 
He taught us to pray, Thy kingdom come on earth 
as it is in heaven. It is true that Jesus brought 
life and immortality to light, and that He said to 
His disciples, — In My Father's house are many 



20 TEE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

mansions ; but all this, and all that He said about 
heaven, was to lead men into the kingdom while 
yet they lived in this world. It was for men and 
not for angels that Christ came and preached the 
good news of the kingdom, otherwise He would 
have preached to angels and not to men. Unless 
we see and accept this view, we shut ourselves and 
the world out from the kingdom and its blessedness 
that Jesus came to establish on earth as it is in 
heaven. If we are not in the kingdom while we 
yet live in the body we shall not be prepared for it 
when we go out of the body. The kingdom that 
Jesus preached is for men to enter while they yet 
live here on the earth. 

The kingdom that Jesus preached was not the 
premillennarian or the sub-resurrection kingdom 
that some think it to have been. The belief is 
general that there is to be a period of at least one 
thousand years during which Christ shall reign 
supreme over all the world. One class of Chris- 
tians, not large, but many of them intellectual, 
educated and devout men, hold that Christ is to 
come in visible form, and in great splendor on the 
clouds of heaven at the opening of the millennial 
period ; that when He so comes those who are then 
living will be changed, the dead will be raised and 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 21 

the kingdom of which Jesus spoke so constantly 
will be set up with Himself as the visibly en- 
throned King, probably on the Mount of Olives ; 
and that this kingdom will endure for at least one 
thousand years. This view of the kingdom is de- 
rived partly from the book of Daniel, partly from 
what Jesus said in the twenty-fourth of Matthew 
and other kindred passages, and partly from the 
apostolic epistles including the book of Revelation. 
The Christians of the first century, including the 
apostles, were ever looking for the immediate 
coming of their ascended Lord, whom they confi- 
dently expected would appear visibly in their day. 
He was to be seen in glory with the holy angels 
before that generation should pass away. They 
were mistaken ; they were disappointed ; their ex- 
pectations were not fulfilled. 

The Scriptures contain scenic and spectacular 
representations and prophecies which, if construed 
literally appear to support that view. But every 
Bible student should know that this whole class of 
scenic prophecies was never intended to have a 
literal, or any other than a spiritual fulfilment. To 
put any other construction on this class of passages 
is to deny their truthfulness. 

Jesus did come in that generation as He prom- 



22 TEE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

ised, but not in the spectacular sense which they 
anticipated. This subject is treated at length in 
my book on The Problem of Final Destiny. 
Christ's kingdom was not outward to the senses 
but inward and spiritual, in the hearts of men. 

All I care now to emphasize is that the kingdom 
which Jesus preached was not something that He 
Himself was miraculously to set up two or ten 
thousand years in the future, but was something 
practical and personal for the people of His own 
day and of our day. It was a kingdom into which 
those whom He then addressed were encouraged, 
by repentance and faith, then and there to enter 
and to enjoy its privileges. Any other view would, 
to my mind, make Christ's teaching of the kingdom 
mystical, impracticable, misleading, and so worse 
than useless. The kingdom that Jesus preached 
was a present kingdom and not some scenic, mirac- 
ulous manifestation thousands of years away, or it 
was nothing of worth to the people of His own day 
or of ours. 

Having settled some mistakes as to the kingdom 
we come now to a fuller study of its nature. The 
kingdom that Jesus preached was a spiritual king- 
dom to be set up in the hearts of men. It was a 
kingdom of righteousness. It was not outward 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 23 

form but inward life ; it was not letter but spirit ; 
it was not creed but experience ; it was not profes- 
sion but reality ; not intellection but heart-choice ; 
not authority but reason ; not tradition but truth 
in the lives and souls of men. This is what Jesus 
meant by the kingdom. 

It follows then that the central virtue, and the 
only essential thing in Christ's gospel of the king- 
dom is love, love of God and love of man. It is a 
love that means good- will and unselfishness ; a love 
that expresses itself in accordant life. Love is of 
God, for God is love. He that loveth is born of 
God and knoweth God. Love is the fulfilling of 
the law. It is the central staple on which all the 
commandments hang, and from which they derive 
their character and value. Love, rightly expressed, 
is the only law of Christ's kingdom, and must 
therefore be made emphatic in this investigation. 

Love is not only the central truth of Christianity 
and of the kingdom, but it is the central truth 
throughout the moral universe of God. It is in the 
spiritual world what gravitation is in the physical ; 
— the one principle that holds all moral and eter- 
nal interests in harmony, that unifies them and 
binds them to God from whom they all proceed. 
Without this central principle of the kingdom noth- 



24 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ing of enduring value could be secured ; nothing 
great would be undertaken and nothing good ac- 
complished. Where love reigns moral evil, and 
that alone, is destroyed. Love is of God, for 

" God is love saith the Evangel, 
And the world of woe and sin, 
Is made light and happy only 
When a love is shining in." 

Christ's kingdom then is the kingdom of love 
burning on the altar of human hearts and shining 
brightly in Christian lives, and so of necessity, 
moulding character and regulating conduct. When 
all men, each for himself, has this experience, then 
will Christ's kingdom be established on earth as it 
is in heaven. The intellect may still be at fault, 
but the heart will be true to Him who is God over 
all and King forever, as the needle is to the pole. 

The kingdom that Christ preached is, in its 
character, instrumentalities and aims, both in- 
dividualistic and socialistic ; that is to say, it ap- 
plies and appeals alike to individuals as such and to 
organized society. Hitherto, until recently, Chris- 
tian teachers have been mainly intent upon preach- 
ing the gospel of the kingdom to individuals in 
order to secure individual conversions to Christ and 
the upbuilding of individual Christian character. 



OUR LORD'S PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM. 25 

This point of individualism has been urged too ex- 
clusively. True, in a sense, " every tub must stand 
on its own bottom." Each moral being has respon- 
sibilities and duties that he cannot delegate and 
may not shirk. While it is true that every man 
must bear his own burdens, it is equally true that 
we are to bear one another's burdens. The king- 
dom stands in the same essential relations to orga- 
nized society that it does to individuals. Men are 
to be instructed, reformed, elevated, converted and 
brought into the kingdom in their associated capac- 
ity no less than as individuals. Families, commu- 
nities and nations, all organized bodies existing for 
useful ends are, as bodies, proper subjects for the 
kingdom ; and every existing agency that tends in 
any way, direct or indirect, to advance society and 
the world towards the kingdom is an element of 
that kingdom. The principles that Jesus taught 
carried to their natural limits, involve all this, and 
show that the kingdom is a much larger thing than 
has generally been supposed. It is not only for the 
saving of individuals but for the uplifting of so- 
ciety, of organizations, of nations and of the world. 
This great subject is only referred to here as ex- 
planatory of the nature of Christ's kingdom, and 
will be considered more fully in its proper connection. 



26 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

We have now before us a general description of 
the gospel of the kingdom, but not a full definition. 
Even if every essential element of the kingdom 
were included, this, of itself, does not sufficiently 
differentiate the kingdom from all that closely re- 
sembles it, but is not identical with it, and there- 
fore is not a complete definition. Not till we have 
studied the gospel of the Church, its scope, modes 
of working, and its relations to the gospel of the 
kingdom can a full definition of either Church or 
kingdom be reached. The two are alike while yet 
they differ. Our second chapter is upon the substi- 
tution of the Church for the kingdom, and this will 
open the way for comparison between them, which 
must result in bringing the kingdom more fully 
into view than any study of it apart by itself, could 
do. The one conception I have of the gospel of 
the kingdom, as Jesus saw it, is that it relates to 
and includes everything in human history that 
works away from ignorance and selfishness and to- 
wards enlightenment, morality and spiritual life. 
All such agencies and influences belong to the gos- 
pel of the kingdom. The gospel of the Church, as 
we shall see, means much less than this. Its 
thought and movement are individualistic and apart 
from the general field of advancing civilization. 



IL 

THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE GOSPEL OF 

THE CHUECH FOE THAT OF THE 

KINGDOM. 



II. 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE GOSPEL OF THE 
CHUECH FOE THAT OF THE KINGDOM. 

We have seen that the central theme of our 
Lord's preaching was the gospel of the kingdom ; 
and also what the kingdom was that Jesus preached. 
Most naturally and without hesitation, we should 
anticipate that the apostles and their associates 
would follow closely in their Master's steps, and 
preach for substance what they had heard from His 
lips ; and that therefore, their great theme, as was 
His, would be the gospel of the kingdom. If the 
apostles believed, as they did, that Jesus was a 
prophet sent from God, that He was the promised 
Messiah, that He was God manifested in the flesh, 
that He was the world's Saviour, and the imperson- 
ation of divine wisdom and goodness, — if they be- 
lieved all this, — then we should say that most 
surely they would keep very close to the line of 
their Lord's teaching, especially as to the gospel of 
the kingdom, which was His central and constant 
subject of discourse. We should expect them to 
present to others what He Himself had taught. 

29 



30 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, 

To put this thought in a still stronger light, let 
us glance a moment at some corresponding cases. 
The Buddhists received their religious teachings, 
many centuries ago, from Buddha whom they 
reverenced as an inspired teacher ; and from that 
day Buddish priests have been proclaiming, as they 
naturally should, the central doctrines that Buddha 
taught. Mohammedans, from the first, have closely 
adhered to the teachings of their great prophet. 
The Lutherans hold and teach the central doctrines 
of Luther; and the Calvinists, of Calvin; the 
Armenians adhere to their Dutch oracle, Armenius ; 
and the "Wesleyans, to Wesley ; and so on to the end 
of the chapter. All this is perfectly natural, and 
an opposite course would have been unnatural and 
disappointing. 

Applying the same principle to the apostles and 
their relation to our Lord's teaching, how much 
more strongly should we anticipate that His great 
central theme of discourse would be theirs also, 
and that it would be presented by them after His 
own way of teaching it. We could not look for 
less, and yet our anticipations are not realized. 
They do not preach the kingdom. 

At this point two singular facts, not easily ex- 
plained, have to be met. The first is that the word 



TEE SUBSTITUTION OF TEE CEUBCE. 31 

kingdom is dropped almost entirely from their 
writings. Only about four times in the Acts of the 
Apostles and in all the Epistles, — together more 
than twice the length of the Synoptic Gospels, — 
does the word kingdom appear ; and in all but one 
of these instances it has no reference to Christ's 
conception of the kingdom as something to be es- 
tablished on earth, but exclusively to the soul's con- 
dition in heaven after the earthly life is ended. In 
1 Cor. 14 : 17, it is said that " the kingdom of God 
is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost." Here in a general 
way, the word expressed in part Christ's conception 
of the universal kingdom, but still it is mixed up 
and put in contrast with the Old Testament idea of 
the kingdom which was largely one of form and 
outward service. 

The second strange fact to be accounted for is 
that the apostles and their successors not only 
practically discarded the word kingdom from their 
vocabulary, but they substituted a newly coined 
word, at that time of very indefinite and undefined 
meaning, in its place. That word is translated 
Church, a term that appears nearly a hundred 
times, in their writings, to one of the kingdom. 

Now be it observed that this word Church is 



32 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

wholly foreign to the Old Testament, not so much 
as once appearing there. I know that modern 
writers talk about the Jewish and Hebrew Church 
and try to read its meaning into the Jewish and 
Hebrew institutions ; but those institutions were 
kingly in their constitution, and were wholly dif- 
ferent in their nature from the later idea of the 
Church. 

Then again, let it be considered that in the four 
gospels the word Church occurs but twice, and both 
instances are in the gospel of Matthew alone ; and that 
in both cases the word is used in such an indefinite 
sense as to make its meaning very uncertain. 
Clearly it has no such meaning there as the word 
Church, a century later came to signify. In Mat- 
thew 16 : 18, where Christ says to Peter, — •" On this 
rock will I build My Church," His meaning both as 
to rock and Church is, and always has been in dis- 
pute. Christ's meaning here of the word Church 
was as different from the later Roman Catholic 
conception as day is from night. In the other 
passage, Matthew 18 : 17, where Jesus says, " tell it 
to the Church," the question naturally arises as in 
the other case, — "What definitely does the word 
Church here signify ? It is a new word of which 
we have no knowledge until we find it here. 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 33 

"Whence came it ? From what is it derived, and 
what, here, is its real meaning ? If, as some sup- 
pose, the idea of the Church is suggested by the 
Jewish Synagogue, why then was not that the 
proper name for it ? Doubtless there was some- 
thing of likeness between the synagogue and the 
Church, or what was called the Church, at the 
beginning ; and yet they were different even then. 
Others, and rightly, as I believe, derive the term 
Church from the Greek word, ekklesia. But the 
classical and proper signification of ekklesia is an 
assembly or congregation. It may be an assembly 
called out for any purpose, political, military, or 
religious. The word does not imply a permanent 
organization ; it is simply a collection of people 
gathered for some common purpose. This is some- 
thing very different from the modern or ancient 
idea of the Church. It is indeed probable that the 
early Christian Churches were little if anything 
more than regular gatherings of the people for 
worship. If they had any organization it was of 
the simplest kind. They had no creed or constitu- 
tion. They were simply an ecclesia, a congrega- 
tion of Christian people ; and to my mind, the 
word Church throughout the ISTew Testament might 
better have been translated Congregation, as, in 



34 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

some translations it has been. Such a rendering 
would express the primitive idea more accurately 
than the word Church has done. At most, what 
was called the Church was a very simple thing to 
which, in time, an entirely new meaning was at- 
tached, and a meaning that the word kingdom 
could never have suggested, a meaning that the 
primitive disciples never dreamed of, even as a 
future possibility. 

But this subject of the substitution of Church for 
kingdom, and what came of it, will be more fully 
considered in the next chapter on the good and evil 
that have resulted from the substitution. 

We are now arrived at a question of exceeding 
interest and one that calls for careful thought. 
Did the apostles deliberately and intentionally sub- 
stitute the term Church for kingdom, giving to the 
new word a different and narrower meaning than 
Christ's term conveyed ? and, if they did this how 
came they to do it ? They certainly knew that 
Christ's preaching was mainly of the kingdom. 
They did not think themselves wiser than their 
Lord, nor did they mean to be disloyal to Him, or 
to reject or undervalue anything that He had 
spoken. 

As suggestive of the right answer to our ques- 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHUBCH. 35 

tion a few words of generalization may be useful. 
Every great teacher and leader of men is in ad- 
vance of his own age. There are millions of people 
who seem content to trudge along in the exact 
tracks which their fathers trod. They have no 
idea of progress and no belief that anything better 
than they now have is possible. Such people are 
found in all the avocations of life ; among farmers, 
mechanics, tradesmen and, to some extent, in the 
professions. There are clergymen who never go 
beyond their people; traditions and creeds limit 
them. They preach familiar platitudes. Like a 
door on its hinges they come and go, but make no 
progress. The kaleidoscope, with its bits of colored 
glass turned this way and that, gives many com- 
binations of form and color, but the same bits of 
glass are in them all. This is a representative 
instrument. Such people of every class are useful 
members of society, and the world could not get on 
without them; but they are followers after, and 
not leaders of men. 

Eorn leaders, I repeat, are in advance of their 
own day, and are not understood and appreciated 
by their own generation. The Bible and the great 
characters of the Bible are illustrations. Noah, 
Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and many others are ex- 



36 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

amples. They were not understood by the people 
of their times as they are by us to-day. This age 
has even passed the goal at which many of those 
old reformers halted. The world is ever onward, 
so that the advance of one age is the rear of the 
succeeding one. 

Of all the great leaders and teachers of men 
Jesus Christ is the most profound, far-seeing and, 
to the people of His day He was the most enigmatic 
and mysterious of teachers. He laid down great 
principles, He brought into view the deepest and 
most spiritual truths of the kingdom of God, but He 
did not undertake the then useless task of fully ex- 
plaining the exact meaning of His words. He left 
that for time and the Spirit of the Lord to reveal. 
His own apostles did not comprehend Him. Their 
minds were not then so enlightened and spiritu- 
ally evolved as to enable them clearly to under- 
stand just what and how much Jesus meant by the 
kingdom, in His teaching. They understood Him in 
part, but their minds were confused; His words 
were often so mysterious and profound that they 
were not able to grasp His deep meaning and to re- 
peat understanding^, His teachings of the gospel 
of the kingdom ; and so, rather than fall into mis- 
takes they started out on a somewhat lower plane 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 37 

where their thoughts were clear. If they spoke at 
all they must stand on a basis where they could 
speak understanding^ from clear conviction, in 
demonstration of the Spirit and with power. This 
was the utmost they could do ; it was this or 
nothing. 

Let persons who are disposed to shrink from the 
explanation here involved recall again that, as a 
matter of fact, Jesus was not comprehended by the 
people of His own day ; and not while He lived, to 
any large extent, by His chosen twelve. The proof 
of this appears continually. True, their minds 
were greatly enlightened after the pentecostal 
manifestation of the Spirit ; but even then they did 
not see, and so could not teach, as deeply as their 
Master had done. After centuries may not blame 
them ; for even down to this day, our Lord's teach- 
ing of the kingdom is little more than half com- 
prehended. The apostles went as far as they saw 
and knew ; they could not have gone further ; and 
doubtless they were right in judging that they 
could do better work for God and man by preach- 
ing on the plane of the Congregation, afterwards 
called Church, than by undertaking to stand on 
that of the kingdom. To have done otherwise in 
their circumstances would have involved a misjudg- 



38 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ment that must have led to weakness and failure. 
It would have made them uncertain, vacillating, 
and often negative in their preaching, and so might 
have defeated the establishment of Christianity in 
the world. Men must be clear and positive in 
their apprehensions of truth or they are power- 
less as public teachers. Suppose that Paul, for 
example, who though not one of the twelve 
apostles, did more than they all to extend and 
establish the Christian religion, had been in doubt 
as to whether or not his preaching was in ac- 
cord with what Jesus would have him preach ; 
what except disheartenment and failure would have 
been the result ? The apostles were right in going as 
far as they clearly saw and no farther. They used 
the term Congregation, afterwards called Church, 
not in the sense of a closely organized ecclesias- 
tical administrative institution. They would have 
shrunk from that idea, because Jesus never sug- 
gested such an organization or any other. He 
placed all Christians on an equality and forbade 
lordship among them. What the apostles meant 
by Congregation or Church was the gathering, and 
place of gathering, of the people for religious serv- 
ice. Close organization was not a part of their 
plan or practice. That was an after innovation. 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 39 

It may be objected again, that the apostles, in- 
spired men, could not have been in an attitude of un- 
certainty as to what Christ meant by the king- 
dom ; and that, if they did not fully comprehend 
His meaning while He was with them they must 
have done so after the Pentecostal baptism. If 
that were true, and if from that day they fully saw 
and understood all that Jesus saw and said, why 
then did they not continue to emphasize our Lord's 
teaching of the kingdom? Nowhere does Jesus 
even hint that His message of the kingdom was to 
be changed to that of the Church. And, besides, 
the theory that encircled the objection assumes that 
there are no degrees of inspiration, and that the 
apostolic knowledge concerning the kingdom must 
have been complete and final. Such a view is mis- 
leading and contradictory of facts. The Bible is a 
progressive book. The apostles were as far in ad- 
vance of Moses as Christ was in advance of the 
apostles. 

The apostles went as far as their inspiration car- 
ried them. They clearly apprehended much of 
what Christ meant by the Good News, translated 
gospel, which He had brought into the world ; and 
they preached that gospel to lost men with clear- 
ness and power. From their day to this the Church 



40 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

has had the right conception of man's duty to his 
God. The duty of repentance, faith, consecration 
and love of God revealed in Jesus Christ has been 
clearly apprehended and faithfully preached. Yery 
much of what Jesus meant by the kingdom has 
been, from the first till now, embodied in the 
Church ; and many Christian people have regarded 
the two as identical. Taking this view it has been 
claimed and understood that whatever of real 
spiritual good there is in the world comes through 
the Church ; and that whatever is not of the Church 
is of little or no religious value. It may be useful 
in a temporal point of view, but it is no part of true 
religion in the sight of God. 

This may be the true conception of the Church 
as it has existed through all the centuries, but it is 
not the true conception of the gospel of the king- 
dom as Jesus proclaimed it. The kingdom is a 
larger and broader thing than the Church ever has 
been, or, in the nature of things, can be. The 
kingdom embraced all of good there is in the 
Church, and much besides which the Church has 
not recognized. It is more man-ward than the 
Church has ever been. Every movement in the 
world, as we have seen, that tends to the uplifting 
of man, and that draws God ward, is an element of 



THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 41 

the kingdom. Doubtless multitudes of people are 
in the kingdom who are not in the Church, and 
who, for one reason or another, could not enter it. 
The point I make is that the Church and the king- 
dom are not synonymous. One is vastly greater 
than the other ; and that all the Christian centu- 
ries have been content to preach the gospel of the 
Church, while Christ preached the gospel of the 
kingdom. From the first, the Church has been 
coming more and more into prominence, and the 
kingdom has been receding from view ; the Church 
has been coming, as the centuries advanced, to be 
an end in itself, rather than a means to a greater 
end beyond itself. To build up the Church rather 
than the kingdom has been, and still is, apparently, 
the practical aim of Church people the world over. 
This was not our Lord's view, nor was it that of 
His apostles. 

Of late this order of things has begun to change. 
Progressive Christian people are beginning to see 
and feel that our Lord's conception of the kingdom, 
which is vastly larger than any conception of the 
Church has ever been, is the true and working con- 
ception. Advance in mental and moral evolution 
is preparing for this larger view. At the present 
time we are hearing more about the kingdom, and 



42 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

of the kingdom as a substitute for the Church, than 
has been heard in all the preceding Christian cen- 
turies. The necessity for a broader view of relig- 
ion is beginning to be extensively felt in the 
Church and out of it. Turn where we will and re- 
ligious people are talking about the kingdom ; and 
this idea is one of constant growth. If it continues 
to grow as it has done for the last fifty years the 
kingdom, and not the Church, will soon be the cen- 
tre of religious interest. The kingdom is coming 
back to the place that Jesus gave it, as He is re- 
ported in the gospels. 

Should that time ever arrive many great ques- 
tions that have long been subjects of controversy 
will find a rational and permanent settlement. In 
that day, among other changes, would not Church 
names, creeds and forms, with the controversies 
they originate, be lost sight of, and be merged in 
the kingdom as rivers are merged in the mighty 
ocean ? Will that day ever dawn upon the world ? 
This great question demands an answer. 



III. 

THE GOOD AND THE EYIL THAT HAYE 
KESULTED FKOM THAT SUBSTITUTION. 



III. 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL THAT HAVE RESULTED 
FEOM THAT SUBSTITUTION. 

The two great facts that have claimed attention 
hitherto are : 

1. The gospel of the kingdom as preached by 
Christ Himself ; and 2. The gospel of the Church 
substituted for that of the kingdom as preached by 
the apostles and their successors. We have seen 
in a general way that the gospel of the kingdom 
was a greater gospel than was that of the Church. 
This difference in character must of necessity lead 
to difference of result. 

It is the purpose of this chapter, therefore, to 
trace the results, good and evil, that have come 
from the substitution of the term Church for king- 
dom. In the preceding chapters these two terms 
have been studied separately, with the promise that 
when they should come together, as they now do, 
that the two, by comparison, should be more fully 
differentiated. The question now is as to their 

agreement and their diversity. 

45 



46 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Happily, what, for convenience, I have called 
the two gospels agree perfectly as to the great end 
to be accomplished. That common end is the sa- 
ving of the world, individually and collectively, from 
sin and death, and the bringing of all men into the 
possession of everlasting life. Jesus expressed that 
one great purpose when He said : God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into 
the world to condemn the world but that the world 
through Him might be saved. When it is seen and 
conceded that the gospel of the kingdom and the 
gospel of the Church have this great common end of 
pursuit, the difference between them cannot be vital, 
and must consist chiefly in difference of breadth and 
method. Both the kingdom and the Church would 
convert the entire world to Christ ; but their 
methods differ. The Church, as we have seen, 
would convert men, one at a time, here and there, 
as opportunity offered, and would depend chiefly 
upon individualistic work for success. While the 
gospel of the kingdom does not ignore, but empha- 
sizes the importance of individual conversions, it 
takes a larger view of the whole subject. It aims 
to instruct, uplift and convert whole communities, 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 47 

organizations, nations and races, as such, and so 
save the world. It therefore regards every move- 
ment ont of the Church as well as in, that tends to 
the betterment of man, to the elevation of society, 
and, especially the uplifting of what are called the 
masses of ignorant and needy people as important 
and necessary elements in the gospel of the king- 
dom. Therefore art, literature, science, business, 
national purity and civilization generally belong to 
the kingdom, as they have not belonged to the 
Church. Indeed, such general movements have, 
for the most part, been carried on outside and in- 
dependently of, the Church; and she has looked 
upon them often as outside of religion, and some- 
times its enemy, with which she must have little or 
nothing to do. If ministers have ventured to 
preach upon these subjects, as some have, of late, 
they have been in some quarters rebuked for neg- 
lecting the gospel to preach politics and follow 
after the world. The gospel of the Church has no 
room for anything but the preaching of Christ and 
Him crucified, for the direct saving of souls ; all 
else has been considered a profanation of the pulpit. 
Let me try to present this difference between the 
gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of the 
Church, by introducing a very homely illustration. 



48 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

The first city of Chicago was built on low, swampy 
land, and years afterwards had to be lifted out of 
the mud and placed on a higher and firmer founda- 
tion. There were two possible ways of procedure. 
One was to take down, stone by stone, every build- 
ing, lay a suitable foundation, and then reerect the 
city, stone by stone, as was done at the beginning. 
This would conform to the Church idea of recon- 
structing the world. The other method of reaching 
the same end, and the one actually employed, was 
to place mighty levers and screws under whole 
blocks of great buildings, and raise them, all to- 
gether, to the desired height, and build under them 
a solid foundation. By this process, street after 
street was elevated, till the whole city was lifted 
out of the slough. This second process represents 
the gospel of the kingdom ; and accomplishes with 
ease, and at small cost, what the first plan would 
have failed to do, or, at best, could only have been 
done at limitless cost of time, labor and expense. 
So, the gospel of the kingdom, by means of moral 
levers and screws of civilization from outside the 
Church, largely, is steadily uplifting communities, 
nations and the world out of the mud of selfish- 
ness, that they may stand on the Eock of Ages. 
Both gospels seek the same end, one by slender 



TEE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 49 

agencies that endeavor to save individuals; the 
other by broad evolutionary movements that under- 
lie, move and uplift the world. 

"What might have followed had the preaching of 
the kingdom as Jesus apprehended it, continued, we 
cannot tell, because we have no actual data on 
which to base a calculation. Potential history is a 
thing of the imagination. But as regards the 
gospel of the Church that has been preached 
throughout Christendom for nearly two thousand 
years, the case is wholly different. The history is 
before us for study and conclusion ; so that the 
good and the evil that have come from it, and from 
the transfer, are apparent. 

"What then, are some of the advantages and 
blessings that have come to the world from the 
substitution of Church for kingdom, as they stand 
revealed in Church history ? Only the briefest 
outline can here be given. The good that has come 
through the Church is incalculably great. 

In the first place, the transfer placed the apostles 
and their associates on grounds that they clearly 
understood. As we have seen, our Lord's concep- 
tion of the kingdom was too deep for them. They 
only in part comprehended it. They saw clearly 
that the preaching of the gospel to individual souls 



50 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, 

for their conversion and salvation belonged to 
Christ's plan, and was foremost in it, for saving 
the world. This was a great idea, great enough to 
fill their souls and inspire their energies ; and they 
gave themselves unreservedly to that work, and 
with what grand results ! Had they stopped to 
inquire fully, what Jesus meant by the kingdom, 
and then tried to express His meaning, without 
clearly understanding it, they would have been 
shorn of their strength. Experimental movements 
are always weak and of uncertain results. The 
apostles were not experimenting ; they knew 
whereof they affirmed ; and it was this confidence 
that gave them power. 

Then, again, the world as it then existed, was 
better prepared for the preaching of the gospel of 
the Church than it was for that of the kingdom. 
It was in a condition to appreciate truths that came 
home to individual consciences, but was not then 
able to enter into great general movements for the 
uplifting of the world, as Jesus' history reveals. 
For the apostolic call to repentance and faith in 
Christ, men were prepared, as results show. 
Further than this they could not have been led. 

Let us now glance down the track of history and 
see what infinite good the gospel of the Church has 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 51 

brought to the world. The good news of salvation 
through Christ has been kept aflame before the eyes 
of men. The great truths of religion have been 
conserved. If at times they have been partly ob- 
scured by tradition, and false doctrine, and worse 
practice, yet truth has ever been her own vindi- 
cator, so that in the darkest days a light has shone 
from the Church for the saving of the people. 

What countless multitudes have been brought to 
Christ and to heaven, through the agency of the 
Christian Church ; and what multitudes of grand 
men and women have been raised up to labor, suffer 
and die in their Master's service ! And never in 
the world's history was the number of such people 
greater than it is to-day. 

The world has been advanced through the influ- 
ence of the Church, not indeed, as it might and 
should have been ; but the civilized world and even 
pagan lands, through Christian missions, are much 
nearer the kingdom to-day than they would have 
been but for the influence of the Christian Church. 
Imperfect as the Church has been and is, she is yet 
the best institution the world has ever seen. Con- 
sider what would follow if the Church were blotted 
out of existence ! Even her enemies would stand 
aghast at the thought of such a calamity. Ee- 



52 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

cently, in conversation with an intelligent and edu- 
cated man, he said to me : " I am not a believer in 
the Christian religion ; I never attend Church, but 
I help support it, and should consider its overthrow 
one of the greatest of calamities." I honored the 
man's intuitions more than his judgment. 

This brief statement is sufficient to reveal the 
author's love and appreciation of the Christian 
Church. It is born of God and cannot die ; though 
it may be reformed, enlarged and merged, as it 
never yet has fully been, in the gospel of the 
kingdom. 

It has been intimated that great evils have come 
from the substitution of Church for kingdom, as 
the working centre of Christianity. It is the 
further purpose of this chapter briefly to expose 
these evils. "What are they ? 

The kingdom, as we have seen, is larger than the 
Church. They both seek the same end, but the 
greater includes the less, while the less does not in- 
clude the greater. Just here lies the beginning of 
the evil. The Church as it has existed through the 
centuries, represents only a half truth ; and a half 
truth is a practical error and must, sooner or later, 
make itself appear as such. History abounds in 
illustrations of this fact. The Church has been 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 53 

weak in many directions where she ought to have 
been strong. She has undervalued ethical culture 
and general morality in the world. She has at 
least discounted moral and reformatory movements 
carried on, often, outside the Church. Indeed, her 
general position through the centuries has been 
that whatever is not of, in, and under the Church 
can have little or no true religious value. Conse- 
quently, the Church has ever been opposed to most 
scientific investigations and conclusions, and to 
whatever lines of advancement that have not origi- 
nated with, and been controlled by, herself. All 
this has flowed naturally from the narrow base on 
which she has stood. Had the gospel of the Church 
been as large as that of Christ's kingdom, such a 
history would have been impossible. It is because 
she has only recognized, and acted upon, a half 
truth instead of a whole one, that her narrowness 
and want of sympathy with wise movements out- 
side of the Church have been so painfully apparent, 
and so injurious both to herself and the world. 

Let me now come to some particulars. And, 
first of all, this narrow one-sided platform of the 
Church opened the way for the growing up of that 
cruel, crushing system of ecclesiasticism that suc- 
ceeded the apostolic age, and for a thousand years 



54 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ruled and cursed the religious world, and whose 
power is not yet broken. Jesus never authorized 
or suggested any system of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment. He put, as we have seen, all His disciples on 
an equality one with another. He said, If any man 
will be a ruler among you, let him be a servant. 
Had the broad base of the kingdom, as Jesus saw 
it, been apprehended and adhered to from the first, 
and afterwards, there could have been no room for 
those ambitions and graspings after power that 
marked the last half of the first century, and in- 
creased afterwards, until that gigantic hierarchy, 
known as the Roman Church, was established as 
the seat of all wisdom and power. That some good 
has come from Church governments, is not denied ; 
but how vast have been the evils ! most of which 
would have been averted if the simple preaching of 
the kingdom, on our Lord's broad basis had been 
apprehended and followed in after generations. 
The principles and interest of the kingdom are 
common property, and can no more be monopolized 
and controlled by ambitious and grasping men 
than can the rain, the atmosphere and the sunshine 
that come from God, alike upon the good and the evil. 
Another evil that has grown out of the narrow 
working ideal of the Church, and the ecclesiasticism 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 55 

that has overshadowed it, is the disposition and 
ability to formulate cast-iron dogmas for the per- 
petual assent of the Christian world ; and dogmas, 
some of which are repugnant to the judgment, the 
conscience and the moral intuitions of mankind. 
My self-appointed limits forbid specification, nor is 
specification necessary, as every intelligent person 
knows just where specifications apply. These dogmas 
have been made by human edicts, so sacred that who- 
ever has doubted or denied them has been counted 
unfit for Church membership, even though he be- 
longed to Christ's kingdom. Such arbitrariness our 
Lord's larger platform could never have allowed. 
Here, loyalty to Christ is the only test of fellowship ; 
and equally so whether such loyalty is found in the 
Church or out of it. 

One other, and the greatest of the evils that 
have come from the substitution, is the spirit of 
rivalry, of division and of sectarianism, which the 
narrower conception of the Church has generated 
and produced, but which the larger gospel of the 
kingdom would have made impossible. Jesus 
prayed that His disciples might be one, even as He 
and His Father were one ; and the apostles plead 
for the same unity. But even then some were for 
Paul, some for Apollos and some for Cephas. 



56 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Before the close of the first century the evil spirit 
of ambition and love of leadership, was a control- 
ling force ; and a force that ever increased in power, 
enkindling controversy, denunciation and persecu- 
tion, which was the disgrace of the early, and even 
of later Christian centuries. 

One outcome of the conflict was the division of 
the ancient Church into what was known as the 
Eastern and Western Churches; the seat of one, 
Constantinople, and of the other, Eome. In the 
western section the struggle went on until, at 
length, the Roman hierarchy was firmly estab- 
lished that for a thousand years ruled, with a rod 
of iron, both Church and State, in all western 
Europe. As a natural result, the car of progress 
rested, and ignorance, superstition and formality 
miscalled religion, was well-nigh universal. Doubt- 
less there were good men and women in those days, 
but they were bound hand and foot in the network, 
of ecclesiastical despotism. Darkness, as we have 
seen, reigned for ten centuries, chiefly because the 
Church had displaced the kingdom. 

The Reformation of the sixteenth century rent 
the corrupt Roman Church in twain and established 
Protestantism over nearly half of Europe. This 
was a great clearing and spiritually clarifying proc- 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 57 

ess. But Church narrowness still prevailed and 
brought in other evils, different in their nature, but 
not less in violation of the spirit and principles of 
the kingdom than were those which had been dis- 
placed. I refer now, not to doctrines, but to divi- 
sive and sectarian movements that rent Protestant- 
ism into hundreds of contending, jealous, and rival 
fragments. It is the boast of Catholicism that she 
has always been one united Church ; it is the weak- 
ness of Protestant Churches that they are not large 
enough in thought, and in love for God and man, 
to bind them together in one harmonious body. 
The heresy prevailed that, if Christians did not 
think alike on all subjects, they must break fellow- 
ship with each other, go off by themselves and form 
separate denominations ; a thing that the gospel of 
the kingdom would never have allowed or made 
possible. The cardinal error of Protestantism is, 
that it overlooks the central fact that union and 
communion with God, as revealed in Jesus Christ 
is, or should be, the one and only Christian test of 
membership and fellowship in the Christian Church. 
Where intellect is exalted above heart-experience, 
there can be no real unity on earth or in heaven. 
Differences of opinion must always exist among 
finite beings ; God only knows the infinite. 



58 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Yet, there are people who believe in denomina- 
tionalism. They say that the spirit of rivalry in 
religion, as in the secular world, commands more 
money, time, and effort, than could otherwise be 
secured. They would even seek to harmonize and 
save the world, not by driving selfishness and party 
rivalry out of it, but by so balancing one form of 
selfish rivalry against another so as to secure a 
measure of efficiency, and of good results, that 
might some day bring harmony and peace to man- 
kind. If this theory be true, Christianity is a fail- 
ure. JSTo balancing of selfish schemes can save the 
world, or do otherwise than drag it downward. 
Alas, for religion when such motives are stronger 
than pure love for God and man ! And yet, one 
cannot help fearing that much of what is called 
Christian work springs from no higher motive than 
that of competition and rivalry. How must Christ 
look upon such so-called service ! 

But, again, it is claimed that sectarianism, and 
not denominationalism, is the evil to be con- 
demned, as if the two were not one and in- 
separable. The distinction is one without a dif- 
ference. Denominationalism is the root out of 
which sectarian zeal grows and without which it 
could not exist and exploit itself, as a poor counter- 



THE GOOD AND THE EVIL. 59 

feit of genuine Christian life. One involves the 
other. 

Not only does denominationalism foster envy- 
ings, jealousies and counter movements for party 
ends, but it is also a huge spendthrift, wasting time, 
life, and vast sums of money to no good purpose. 
In hundreds of localities it tries to sustain, often 
half-a-dozen Churches, where one united Church 
would do more good than all of them combined. 
And, moreover, these divisions into rival sects are 
the great stumbling-block to the outside world that 
knows their meaning and folly. This is also the 
foremost obstacle to successful foreign mission 
labor. It not only diverts funds from the Churches 
which they would otherwise receive, but it em- 
barrasses missionaries, and exposes them to criti- 
cisms which they cannot answer. And, most of all, 
it is contrary to the gospel of Christ's kingdom. 

That some advantages may come from denomina- 
tionalism, as they do from selfishness, from slavery, 
from wars, from sin in general and from the devil, 
is conceded. But the evils overbalance the good, 
a hundredfold. The good is incidental, while the 
evils are inherent and vital. 

Here the question naturally arises : Suppose 
that the gospel of the Church had never been sub- 



60 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

stituted for that of the kingdom, and that the 
gospel of the kingdom had continued to be the 
ideal of Christendom, would not the same evils that 
have been described have followed ? Did Christ's 
kingdom contemplate and provide for such evils? 
If not, and its principles had been followed, the 
evils could not have arisen. I concede that if the 
kingdom had not been the kingdom, but only an- 
other name for Church, the results might have been 
much the same. But if the gospel of the kingdom 
had been fully comprehended and carried out as 
Christ conceived and preached it, then the results 
would have been vastly different. The kingdom 
would have included everything that tends directly, 
or indirectly, to bring the world to God, individually 
and in masses ; and so great a conception could not 
have been monopolized and divided into fragments, 
any more than duration and space can. 

Will the time ever come when the Church shall 
be so enlarged and spiritualized as fully to compre- 
hend our Lord's conception of the kingdom and be 
merged into it? That would be indeed a grand 
consummation ! It will be the further purpose of 
these chapters to show that such a result, and a re- 
sult still greater, is some day to be reached, and by 
what agencies all this is to be accomplished. 



IV. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM TO BE- 
COME maVEKSAL. 



IV. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM TO BECOME UNI- 

VEKSAL. 

Otje Lord taught us to pray: Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
What does this sublime petition mean? And on 
what grounds may we be assured that the petition 
will some day be fully answered ? These questions 
do not contemplate the methods by which Christ's 
kingdom is to come on earth as it is in heaven, but 
the great and inspiring fact that it will so come. 

One fundamental distinction exists, and must ever 
exist, that differentiates earth from heaven. On 
earth physical nature abounds ; in heaven, ethereal 
nature superabounds. While both of these natures 
are real and not imaginary, there is a deeper real- 
ity and one more abiding, and of a higher nature 
in ethereal than belongs to physical nature. And 
yet, the two natures are not wholly distinct, one 
from the other. The physical world in which we 
live is more than physical. We have in it, indeed, 
a continual appeal to the senses, — to the sense of 

63 



64 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

sight, of hearing, of taste and of touch ; but we 
have more than this. In addition to what is 
physical, we have thought, feeling, volition and life ; 
which, though not material, are real. Mind, no 
less than matter is everywhere revealed in nature ; 
and, although mind is invisible and intangible to 
the human senses, it is so chiefly because mind is 
higher and mightier than sense, or than all material 
things with which sense has to do. The material 
is made for the immaterial and not the reverse. It 
is the truth, the life, the ethereal which dwells in 
the material, that gives value to the physical world 
and explains its existence. At best the physical is 
but the shadow of the spiritual. The sun in the 
heavens foreshadows the invisible ; — it reveals the 
infinite and the eternal, even more than it displays 
its own glory. The seen and the unseen are both 
needful ; one, as a means, and the other as an end. 
As for man himself, he is a compound of the 
physical and ethereal. Material and ethereal ele- 
ments enter into his being ; but what those ele- 
ments are, primitively considered, is something that 
lies beyond the reach of human ken. We know 
that the mind is different from, and more than, the 
body. The spirit, not the body, is the JSgo, the 
personality, that resides in the body, much as men 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL, 65 

live in houses, and moths in cocoons. The soul is 
not only the maker and the life of the body, but it 
is the seat of consciousness, and of all that con- 
scious personality implies and explains. It is that 
which allies us to God, that makes us His children, 
and He our Father, and which binds the race, and 
all moral beings, in the golden bonds of a common 
brotherhood. Spirit is life, divine life ; and when 
it becomes allied to God in love, confidence, fellow- 
ship and sweet sympathy, it becomes consciously, 
eternal life. 

It is doubtless good for the conscious human 
spirit to begin its moral existence in a material 
body. Indeed, it could not begin otherwise and be 
in harmony with divine order, or God's evolution- 
ary method, which is to advance through the less 
perfect to the more perfect. The spirit needs just 
that training, discipline and experience which life 
in an animal body necessitates. The body is the 
soul's earthly home, and should be treated wisely, 
tenderly, lovingly, as should all of God's good 
gifts. At the same time, we should remember that 
our material bodies are animal and not spiritual, 
and are to be held in subjection to the spirit, and 
not be allowed to usurp dominion over it. God has 
given to man this power ; and it is just this that 



66 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

constitutes him a child of God, and differentiates 
him from the lower animal creation. 

I believe the main purpose of our earthly life to 
be the cultivation of the spirit ; and that this is to 
be secured, not by any single fiat of man's respon- 
sible power of choice, nor by any miraculous fiat of 
the Almighty, but by a series of struggle and 
growth in which human and divine agency cooper- 
ate. Neither power can succeed without the other. 
The sad fact is that for the most part the animal 
in man has dominated the spiritual, so that unrea- 
soning passion and manifold forms of criminal sel- 
fishness have, in the past ruled, if they do not still 
rule human life and destiny. 

As the world advances towards the gospel of the 
kingdom, a change is manifest. The moral world 
now is far advanced beyond what it was at the 
dawn of recorded human history ; it is still advan- 
cing ; and the time will come when man's higher 
nature will hold his lower in complete control. 
Even now, there are authentic records of experi- 
ences where the ethereal element, while yet in the 
flesh, not only rules the animal nature but, at times, 
rises to such a spiritual height as to act almost in- 
dependently of it, much as it will in the heavenly 
world. 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 67 

When all men reach that state, or stage in moral 
progress in which the spiritual body not only domi- 
nates the animal, but, on the positive side, rises 
into the light, and love, and life of God its Father, 
— then will the gospel of the kingdom, as Jesus 
saw, and, in principle proclaimed it, be established 
on earth as it is in heaven. 

How great a revolution for our crazy, suffering, 
sinful world such a change would be ! Glance at 
the best state of society that now exists, which I 
believe to be the Christian Church, and how far 
short of what the gospel of the kingdom calls for 
and makes possible, do most Christian people fall. 
If we turn to other historical religions in the 
world, and to the people who embrace them, the 
moral distance from the final goal appears to be 
yet further removed. Enter the boundless field of 
business activity, take careful note of the unright- 
eous practices that prevail, and of the selfish mo- 
tives that prompt them, and we see at once what 
mighty changes must come over the business world 
before it can enter the gospel of the kingdom. The 
nations of the earth, past and present, have ever 
been, and still are, living each for itself. National 
history is largely the record of gigantic selfishness. 
Each is scheming for some personal advantage; 



68 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

and is either at war, or preparing for war against 
any power that may cross its track. "What a 
change must come over the nations before they can 
enter the kingdom ! It is needless to go further 
and dive down into the depths of irreligion and im- 
morality for proof that the world, as a whole, is 
yet far away from the gospel of the kingdom. 

But there is a brighter side to this great subject. 
The world, as we shall see, is everywhere changing 
for the better. One evolutionary advance, and this 
along many lines, succeeds another. Old errors 
are being discarded ; new light beams along the 
world's pathway ; and as knowledge increases and 
human conditions improve, the hearts of men are 
softening, their higher natures begin to rule the 
lower, and so it will continue to be, until, in some 
coming century the gospel of the kingdom will be 
established throughout the earth as it is in heaven. 
It is the further purpose of this chapter to give 
some of the grounds for this belief ; not the 
methods of producing the great result, but reasons 
for believing that some day it will come to pass. 

It has already been seen that the gospel of the 
Church and the gospel of the kingdom, as regards 
the end to be secured, are one in thought and pur- 
pose. They differ mainly as to the nature and ade- 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 69 

quacy of the means to be employed in securing that 
purpose. It has been the dream, the faith and the 
hope of the Christian Church for nearly twenty 
centuries that she may draw the whole world to 
herself and to God ; and throughout a large part of 
Christendom it is her dream to-day. The most 
heroic endeavors, costing millions of lives and 
countless millions of treasure, have been expended 
for this end. All Christian denominations, with 
commendable energy, are vying with each other 
for the accomplishment of this noble purpose ; and 
surely no thoughtful person could wish to have 
these efforts of the Churches diminished, although 
one might desire to see them sometimes, in part, 
differently directed. It has been objected that 
those who put the gospel of the kingdom into great 
prominence are indifferent to the interests and 
work of the Church. This cannot, certainly should 
not be true ; because, for the present, and probably 
for a long time to come, the Christian Churches of 
the world must be the definite and aggressive force 
for the extension of the gospel on earth. The 
gospel of the kingdom, like ships in the offing, is 
still in the distance, and cannot yet be considered 
as the central, working force of the world. The 
Churches are now in the foreground. Let ministers 



70 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

and people, as best they can, work on, drawing 
closer together and enlarging their views and oper- 
ations until, step by step, they shall comprehend 
the greater gospel of the kingdom, and be merged 
into it. So much, at least, needs to be said in com- 
mendation of the Churches and of the separate and 
responsible place they hold in the work of the 
world for the coming of the kingdom. 

Returning now to the question, — Will the time 
ever come when the larger gospel of the kingdom, 
as Jesus saw it, will be established throughout the 
earth as it is in heaven ? The answer must be an 
affirmative one, and, among others, for the follow- 
ing reasons : 

1. The existence of such a world as ours affords 
strong presumptive evidence that it will reach, 
somewhere in the future, a state of ideal perfection. 
God is back of everything that is finite. Whatever 
His creative energy undertakes is for some great 
benevolent purpose. Men appear to act, at times, 
impulsively, and with no ultimate end in view; 
but God, never. In all He does, God not only has 
a benevolent purpose, but what He wills to do 
never fails of accomplishment. Because men fail 
so often and so utterly, we sometimes, inconsider- 
ately it may be, assume that some of God's plans 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL, 71 

may come to nought. But such a thing has never 
taken place since the universe began to exist, and 
never will. God never fails. 

This world then, was made for some great and 
good end. Man, the noblest of God's earthly work, 
bears the divine image, and so must have some high 
destiny. When we look back over the past and 
observe how sin, sorrow and suffering have marked 
the track of human history, it is not easy for us to 
find conclusive proof of God's infinite goodness in 
the creation and condition of the human race. To 
find that proof in full-orbed completeness we must 
take in the entire history of earth and man, past, 
present and future, and not view it in segments. 
Could such a view be obtained the character of 
God, at every period, would be to human vision, 
more glorious than is the sun in the heavens. 

Clearly then, God's plan for this earth and its 
inhabitants, is not yet fully unfolded. The earth 
itself will some day, in the process of creation, leave 
behind it the storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, pesti- 
lences and manifold causes of suffering that have at 
times wrought desolation, and then will come in 
their places, from earth and sky, such health-giving, 
life-preserving, safety -securing and soul-satisfying 
provisions, as shall cause men to forget past sor- 



72 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, 

rows, because of present joys and future pros- 
pects. 

But, if the groaning earth is to be regenerated 
and perfected in the carrying out of God's plan, 
how much more must His benevolent purpose ex- 
tend to man, and ensure for him a far higher experi- 
ence of moral purity, and of divine favor than he 
has ever, as a race, consciously enjoyed. Such a 
possibility is full of hope and significance. It 
means light for darkness, liberty for bondage, love 
and life for hatred and death. In particular, it 
means the breaking away from every form of evil, 
whether in private, social, business, or national 
life; and a full entrance into the gospel of the 
kingdom where God shall reign supreme, and whose 
banner over the world shall be love. This would 
be the consummation of human happiness, and the 
end for which man has been in training through 
all the ages. I repeat that the earth's existence 
and man upon it affords presumptive proof that 
Christ's kingdom, which means a Theocracy, is to 
become universal. 

2. A glance at the course of human history 
brings us to the same conclusion. History is an 
account of the events and changes that have taken 
place in past times, and of the causes that produced 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 73 

them, and which they, in turn, produce. We have y 
only to compare the world as it is to-day with what 
it was four thousand, or two thousand, or one 
thousand, or five hundred years ago, to see that the 
stream of progress has been ever onward, and is 
still moving with ever increasing momentum towards 
the kingdom. The progress has not been rapid, 
but we must remember that the mills of God grind 
slow, but they grind exceeding small; and also, 
that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. Granting that 
there have been eddies, counter currents and some- 
times long stretches of almost no apparent move- 
ment, yet, when we compare one generation with 
another, and especially, if this comparison is ap- 
plied to the more civilized nations of the earth, 
progress upward and onward is the one marked 
characteristic of history. We have only to glance 
at the savage days of early Old Testament times, 
and of all ancient history, with the wars of to-day, 
— horrible as these are, — or to review the bloody 
persecutions, and wholesale slaughters of Christian 
people, prompted, even in modern times by the 
Church in the supposed interests of religion, and 
compare them with the spirit and practice now pre- 
vailing, to see that the world, on its religious side, 



74 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM, 

is passing from almost blank darkness into clear 
dawn, if not into broad daylight. Let any English- 
speaking people, or even hali-civilized nation, at- 
tempt to-day to repeat the tragic scaffold scenes, 
or burnings at the stake, that were applauded, even 
in England, not many centuries ago, and the world 
would rise against the barbarity, as the United 
States rose against the cruelties of Spain in 
Cuba. 

All this clearly indicates that both Church and 
State, — that civilizations indeed, — are steadily ad- 
vancing towards the kingdom ; that the law of love 
and the principle of brotherhood are at least com- 
ing into view, both in the Church and out of it. It 
may and probably will be, a long time before 
Church and State, before the religions and civiliza- 
tions of the world will consent to throw off their 
excrescences, tear down their useless and worn-out 
scaffolding and come unitedly, in spirit and in truth 
into Christ's gospel of the kingdom. But, if his- 
tory, the greatest of teachers, assures us of any- 
thing yet in the future, it points, in the light of the 
past, to such further triumphs of truth as shall ulti- 
mate in the establishment of a complete Theocracy 
over all the earth, which is the natural, normal 
government for man, and is only another name for 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 75 

the kingdom that Jesus preached two thousand 
years ago. History predicts its coming. 

3. The instincts and moral intuitions of man 
assure the universality of the kingdom. Instinct in 
animals and intuition, added to instinct in man, 
never deceive, for God has placed them there as an 
unfailing guide. Intuition is more than instinct ; 
it is God's voice in the soul, telling us what ought 
to be, and what must be, if man ever comes into 
harmony with himself, with the universe and with 
God. Something within us gives assurance that 
the " best is yet to be " ; and that the best is only 
to be found and enjoyed in the gospel of the king- 
dom, where all selfishness is left behind, where the 
law of brotherhood prevails, where love is the ru- 
ling principle, and God is worshiped with supreme 
adoration. This is the only true ideal of perfected 
society. Every human soul grows weary at times, 
if it is not always weary, with the existing condi- 
tion of the race; man has better ideals than are 
now actualized, and he cherishes the hope that 
some day, and by means that he does not clearly 
apprehend, the evils of the past and present may 
be overcome, and the good that he longs for, be at- 
tained. This is not an optimistic view, cherished 
by a few ; it is the soul-breathing of the human 



76 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

race. The exceptions are so few, and so unworthy, 
that they prove the rule, instead of breaking it. 

Would such a condition of things exist, would 
the Creator cause it to exist, if the experience 
longed for were never to be attained ? This argu- 
ment of longing for and anticipating, is accepted as 
one of the foremost evidences of continued life after 
physical death. If it has such weight in that con- 
nection it should be almost conclusive in this. The 
moral nature of man then, its needs, intuitions, 
longings and struggles, assure the universality of 
the kingdom. 

4. Scripture, prophecy and declaration lead to 
the same conclusion. Prophetic writings, for the 
most part, are general in statement, figurative in 
form, and were never intended to have a strictly 
literal fulfilment. Reasoning therefore from proph- 
ecy, is apt to be uncertain and unsatisfying, except 
as to general conclusions. But whoever has studied 
the prophetic parts of the Old Testament, in their 
descriptions of the kingdom of God as it is to be in 
the indefinite distance, cannot fail to have seen that 
a glorious future for the Lord's people and for the 
world of mankind is, with ever recurring and in- 
creasing interest, set forth in glowing colors. Take 
several chapters in Isaiah, and the Book of Zech- 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 77 

ariah, for example, and we feel the poetic flow, and 
see the general import of the message, while yet we 
cannot expound the words as if they were a didac- 
tive discussion of the great subject of the future 
kingdom. The description is pictorial rather than 
didactive, and, for this reason, it leaves a clearer 
and deeper impression as to the universality and 
blessedness of the kingdom than unpoetic words 
could convey. 

Were I to quote these passages in full, many 
pages would have to be given to them. It is better, 
therefore, to rely upon the reader's recollection of 
what has been described, than to undertake lengthy 
quotations. Such expressions as these often occur. 
Gentiles shall see Thy righteousness and all kings 
Thy glory. Kings shall be Thy nursing fathers and 
queens Thy nursing mothers. JSTo one shall say to 
another know ye the Lord, for they shall all know 
Him, from the least to the greatest. His name 
shall endure forever ; His name shall be continued 
as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in 
Him ; and all nations shall call Him blessed. Let 
the whole earth be filled with His glory. Swords 
shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into 
pruning hooks. Nations shall learn war no more. 
In the Book of Daniel we have the clearest Old Tes- 



78 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

tament statement of the coming kingdom : In the 
days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a 
kingdom which shall never be destroyed ; and the 
kingdom shall not be left to other people and it 
shall break in pieces and consume all these king- 
doms, and it shall stand forever. Much the same 
is found in the second of Isaiah: And it shall 
come to pass in the last days that the mountain of 
the Lord's house shall be established on the top of 
the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills 
and all nations shall flow into it. 

In the New Testament, Jesus taught us to pray : 
Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. 
His whole teaching, and that of His apostles, was, 
that the gospel of the kingdom is to become uni- 
versal, and that Christ is to hold at least a millen- 
nial reign over all the earth. The closing chapters 
of Revelation confirm this view, as indeed does the 
whole Bible. 

After all that can be said, our highest ground of 
assurance that the gospel of the kingdom will be 
established over all the earth centres in Jesus 
Christ. The Christ of God, the Son of Man, is the 
centre and soul of the Christian system. Take Him 
out of it, and Christianity is destroyed. It is the 
personal Jesus, not simply as He was on earth two 



TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 79 

thousand years ago, but as He is now, a renewing 
force in the thoughts, hearts and lives of good men, 
that makes the gospel the power of God unto sal- 
vation, and insures finally, its universal acceptance. 
No moral power on earth compares with that 
which emanates from Jesus, even as light, heat and 
life emanate from the sun, flooding, warming and 
fructifying the whole earth. Such a personality 
lifted up is drawing and will draw all men unto 
himself and to God. This is the central ground of 
hope for the universal prevalence of the gospel of 
the kingdom. 

It was the purpose of this chapter to emphasize, 
rather than elaborately prove, what is commonly 
conceded, namely, that this world and all the great 
interests it represents, is somewhere in the future, 
to part with its ignorance, and its selfish schemes, 
and to become intelligently and wholly consecrated 
to the service of God and man ; and so, enter fully 
into the kingdom as Jesus saw, and in principle, 
preached it. In accomplishing this purpose I have 
only called attention to the fact apart by itself, 
and not to the influences and agencies by which 
the great ideal is to become a reality. This prac- 
tical aspect of the subject is to occupy succeeding 
chapters. 



V. 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PEOGEESS 

AND MAN'S ADVANCE INTO 

THE KINGDOM. 



V. 

EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PROGEESS AND 
MAN'S ADVANCE INTO THE KINGDOM. 

If the Almighty has some fixed and definite 
mode, law, or principle of order, through which He 
exerts His creative energy, and carries forward His 
work in the universe, then a clear knowledge of 
that mode and of how it operates, must be of 
almost infinite importance to mankind and de- 
mands the profoundest study. If any such mode 
or law of procedure exists, the men of past genera- 
tions have not discovered it. The fact that such 
discovery may not have been reached is no proof 
against the reality of some mode or system of 
operations, any more than was the failure, for 
many thousand years, to discover the facts and 
principles of astronomy or of geology, proof of 
their non-existence. Ignorance cannot disprove 
knowledge, though it may reject it, as many 
chapters in human history clearly reveal. 

All, or at least most men, believe in the general 
fact of creation and progress, while yet they may 

83 



84 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

have but the crudest ideas as to how such results 
are produced. When the ancients believed that 
the earth was the centre of the universe, and that 
it was a flat surface and must rest on something, 
they could reach no better conclusion than that the 
something on which it rested was an elephant's 
back. Of course, this only meant that they had 
reached the limit of human knowledge. 

With almost equal credulity, the generations of 
men have believed that the world and the universe 
were created in six days, out of nothing, by the direct 
fiat of the Almighty ; and that since the work was 
finished, God has rested from all creative energy. 
They have discovered no central law or mode of 
creation, through which the fiat of the Almighty 
operates, and have not believed that there was any 
such law. The purpose and direct will of God, 
apart from any law or system of order, is quite 
sufficient, they think, to account for all things that 
exist. 

In our times, many wise men have come to be- 
lieve in the fact of progress, even of creative prog- 
ress ; that this is now going on in many direc- 
tions, and that God is in some way connected with 
it, but how He is so connected they do not know, 
and they think that no one else knows. This class 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PEOOEESS. 85 

of people are especially opposed to what, of late, 
has been called the doctrine of evolution, because 
in their view it contradicts Scripture and degrades 
man. On the same grounds, nearly all great ad- 
vances in science have been charged with contra- 
dicting Scripture, robbing God, degrading man and 
doing violence to religion; but, in the end, true 
science has always prevailed over ignorance. 

Evolution and progress are not interchangeable 
terms. Evolution lies back of progress and is ex- 
planatory of the mode or way by which real prog- 
ress is secured. Evolution necessitates progress 
much as cause does effect. Apart from evolution, 
there is no abiding progress. What is this so much 
talked of and disputed thing called evolution ? 

Before answering this question a word of ex- 
planation may be allowable. It is the purpose of 
the writer, in all these chapters, to give in brief 
and definite form his own views, to avoid learned 
quotations, or hiding for protection behind great 
names. If these studies and their conclusions com- 
mend themselves to the judgment and moral sense 
of those who may read them, the writer will be 
pleased ; and if what is written fails in its effort to 
secure such approval, he will be almost equally 
pleased to have them rejected, in the hope that 



86 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

something better may be substituted in their place. 
Only truth is enduring and sacred. 

What then, does evolution, as God's method of 
creation and advance in this world and beyond, 
signify ? To start with, I have no theory to offer, 
but some great facts are constantly in evidence that 
appear to involve a theory of creation and progress 
that explains the movements of this world and 
beyond, so far as we apprehend them. 

One great fact that seems unmistakable and un- 
deniable, and which enters largely into this study 
is, that everything in nature, — man included, — is 
ever struggling with its environment ; and that its 
growth and progress, or the opposite, is largely 
conditional upon that struggle. Every spire of 
grass, every leaf on every tree, every blossom, every 
fruit on the bough and every seed in the ground, 
has to struggle with its environment ; in other 
words, has to fight for existence, otherwise it will 
be crowded out and killed. The stronger survive 
and the weaker die ; and in this way progress from 
lower to higher forms of life is secured. I know 
of no exceptions to this universal law. Every 
insect and microbe, even if microscopic, every fish 
in the sea, every bird in the air, every beast in the 
field or forest, has to struggle with environment 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PROGRESS. 87 

for life, or die ; and with the weaker individuals, 
struggle is often unavailing. 

Man is no exception to a law that is universal. 
Whether we study man as an individual, or in his 
family and social relations, or as a literary and pro- 
fessional character, or as to his political, civil and 
religious life, or in any other set of human rela- 
tions, constant struggle with environment is the 
condition of success. Men who drift, without 
struggling, amount to nothing. When strugglt 
ceases, men remain stationary for a short time and 
then fall backward and die. This is not theory, 
but actual experience as found in every department 
of human history and of world life. 

The very earth on which we live was brought 
into being, and into its present condition, through 
long and almost infinite struggle with environment, 
both from within and from without ; so that Paul's 
great declaration that the whole creation has 
groaned in travail and pain until now, is literally 
true of this earth, and is probably true of every 
celestial globe. God creates and secures onward 
movement everywhere, not by direct fiat, but 
through one vast system of order which we call 
law ; and the fundamental fact in that system is 
struggle with environment. This appears to be 



88 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

and must be the eternal law of nature, as God has 
established it, and it is of universal application. 
We know it to be so in man's wide field of ex- 
perience. 

It has come to be a fixed conclusion in science 
that any law or principle that applies in one de- 
partment or sphere in nature, applies universally ; 
so that if we know how God creates and pushes the 
world forward in one department, we have discov- 
ered His method in every other. The universe is 
unified ; all are but parts of one stupendous whole. 
The conclusion then, at which we arrive, is this : 
That struggle with environment is the one funda- 
mental condition of all life, growth and progress. 
And this law of creation and advance, which is the 
right hand of the Almighty, is what is, or should 
be, chiefly meant by the term evolution. 

There is however, another aspect to this great 
question of evolution that calls for brief attention. 
Some who are prepared to admit the doctrine in 
general, as it has been here stated, hesitate when it 
is claimed that the struggle upward, as described, 
often involves higher forms of life proceeding from 
lower ones ; such, for example, as a definite species 
emanating from some simple variety, or some new 
genus coming up from a lower species; that this 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PROGRESS. 89 

process may go on from less to greater until, at 
last, man in this way, appears on the earth. It is 
claimed, but by some denied, that all life has ad- 
vanced from what appears to be a common germ ; 
and all, through this universal struggle with en- 
vironment. 

Facts fully attested prove that this general view, 
at some points, is clearly established. At others, 
we must wait for further investigation and develop- 
ment. But, because the evolutionary theory is not 
absolutely proven at every point, we are not, as 
some do, to refuse acceptance so far as proof is con- 
clusive. What we do know with certainty renders 
other conclusions along the same line exceedingly 
probable. They cannot be denied while yet they 
are not fully established. As we have seen, God's 
methods are uniform ; and what we know to be 
true in one department, we must anticipate as prob- 
ably true in every other. Only proof to the con- 
trary can weaken that probability. 

Another class of people have a still different view 
of this doctrine of evolution. With some qualifi- 
cation perhaps, they concede that evolution holds 
good as to the physical world. They see, in the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms, including the phys- 
ical nature of man, that struggle with environ- 



90 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ment is the condition of continued life and higher 
development. But they do not see that this same 
law is applicable to man's moral and spiritual na- 
ture. His spirit, they say, is a direct emanation 
from God, and that only direct divine influences can 
sustain and develop it. If this were so, is not the 
law of evolution as much a divine agency as any 
other of which we have knowledge ? A moment's 
thought should convince any one that evolution is as 
applicable to moral and spiritual life as it is to life 
in any of its lower forms. 

The spirit of a man is as much an entity, a form, 
a real existence, as is the body. The body is the 
house in which the spirit lives, and which the spirit 
formed, as the mollusk forms the shell for its own 
habitation. The shell does not form the mollusk, 
nor the body the spirit, but the opposite. The 
spirit then, no less than the body, may be subject 
to the law of evolution. This not only may be 
true, but as a matter of experience, it is so. Edu- 
cation of the intellect, as every child knows, means 
toil and struggle in the schoolroom and out of it, 
for a long term of years. There is no royal road 
to learning. We must work for it, or live and die 
in ignorance. As to ethical and spiritual life, is it 
not substantially the same ? Are we not always 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PROGRESS, 91 

struggling with ourselves, the lower nature against 
the higher and the higher against the lower, each 
striving for the mastery ? In the spiritual realm it 
is the same. 

How hard is it for man to break away from him- 
self and to find God in Christ, and in Him eternal 
life ! How many make the effort, but the struggle 
is too great for them, and they fail. And many 
who succeed for a time are afterwards, through the 
power of temptation from within and from with- 
out, drawn back to the world and its selfish ways. 
Spiritual life, even when it advances heavenward, 
is, as all experience shows, a continuous struggle 
with environment. The strong succeed, the weak 
fail. There is no exception to this law of struggle 
except in part, when one becomes so dead to him- 
self, so filled with the Spirit and so conscious of 
God, that the world and the flesh have lost power 
over him ; and even then, he must be ever watchful 
and take heed lest he fall. If these things are 
so, then the law of evolution, which means life 
and growth through struggle with environment, 
applies to man's ethical and moral nature, even as 
it does to his physical. Indeed, this law of evo- 
lution, or struggle with environment, as the means 
of preserving life, and of coming up to a higher and 



92 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGD03L 

better life, is the underlying law of God's universe. 
It is the law of all worlds and of heaven, as it is of 
earth. 

And yet, from some quarters the objection returns 
that true religion is a supernatural thing and is ex- 
ceptional; that while it involves human freedom 
and responsibility, God still is the direct author and 
finisher of our faith. And it is claimed further, 
that the doctrine of evolution makes religion the 
product of natural law and not of supernatural 
grace; it makes it the work of man and not of 
God. If the objection is well taken, it is fatal ; if 
not, it is groundless. What are the facts? God, 
so far as we can see, and for all that man knows, or 
can know to the contrary, works universally through 
some great system of order that we call law ; and 
that His spiritual working, though in a different 
sphere and by different agencies, is as actually in ac- 
cord with general law as are His operations in the 
physical world. When the heart of any man is in 
a right attitude towards truth and God, the Holy 
Spirit comes to that soul and leads it into life and 
peace as naturally, and as much in conformity with 
eternal law, as when the rain and sunshine fall on 
the parched and seeded earth and bring forth first, 
the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LAW OF PROGRESS. 93 

the ear, not miraculously, but in conformity with 
natural law. And that law, alike in each case, is 
God's law of evolution ; that is to say, it is struggle 
with environment, which, when rightly conducted, 
secures Divine cooperation. Religion is no more 
supernatural, and apart from the divinely appointed 
order of nature, as the Almighty has established it, 
than is the growth of vegetation, the coming and 
going of animal life, or the birth and death of man. 
The great system of God's appointment, which 
wise men have come to call evolution, as an efficient 
and secondary cause, is back of them all. God 
works ever through this system and not otherwise, 
as the facts of observation and experience clearly 
reveal. 

What, I am asked, is the purpose of bringing this 
doctrine of evolution into the general study of the 
kingdom as Jesus comprehended it ? The question 
is a fair one and demands an answer. 

We have seen that evolution means creation and 
progress. It is God's method of uplift and advance 
from lower to higher conditions, and this through 
struggle with environment on the part of whatever 
is to be new-created. God's law of evolution oper- 
ates in the sphere of mind and of religion no less 
than in the vegetable and animal kingdoms ; and it 



94 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

is in the department of ethical and spiritual life 
and growth that its place and importance in this 
study of the kingdom clearly appears. If religious 
life, through struggle with environment, is to be 
advanced until the Church and the world are 
merged in the gospel of the kingdom, — as the pre- 
ceding chapter claims, — then, it is of the highest 
moment that we understand, as far as knowledge is 
now possible, the pathways and stages along which 
the Church and world must travel and struggle 
from the place where they now are, on to their 
final and glorious destination in the kingdom. That 
journey will be a " hard road to travel," otherwise 
it would not be God's evolutionary and creative 
method. Advance towards the kingdom is as 
actually a form of new creation as is the making of 
stellar worlds, but in another sphere of creative 
energy. The process may be slow and difficult 
but, at length, when the goal is reached, it will be 
without violence and will come as naturally and 
joyously as does the rising sun, or the leaf-bursting 
and genial springtime, or, as does the prepared 
soul's translation into glory. 

In the six succeeding chapters I propose to trace 
the evolutionary lines along which the Church and 
world must travel, and the process of struggle with 



EVOLUTION GOD'S LA W OF PROGRESS. 95 

environment they must pass through on their long 
journey towards and into the gospel of the king- 
dom. This purpose, added to foregoing sugges- 
tions, explains why the law of evolution is given so 
large a place in so small a volume on a great sub- 
ject. Evolution is the key to what follows ; it un- 
locks the world's history, and is the working prin- 
ciple in the whole creative and struggling move- 
ment of the moral world away from self and up to 
God. 

Let us not complain that God's plan of creation 
and progress, especially for man, means so much of 
opportunity and difficulty, of struggle and hard- 
ship, of encouragement and disappointment, of pain 
and pleasure, of success and failure ; and that these 
experiences are ever alternating each other from 
the beginning to the end of every mortal life. 

Let us rather consider that all these and similar 
experiences, are necessary to our social, intellectual 
and moral advancement, — that they are rounds in 
the ladder by means of which we climb up to 
heaven and to God, and without which such climb- 
ing would be impossible. All deep thinkers on the 
mystery of human life recognize these experiences, 
and welcome them as optimistic facts, and as the 
only rational pathway to a glorious hereafter. The 



96 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

two Brownings make this view of life, as do other 
poets, the chief burden of their song ; and surely it 
is God's way of leading the world into the gospel 
of the kingdom. When John, the Bevelator, asked 
of the angel, Who are these ten thousand times ten 
thousand robed in white? He answered, — These 
are they who have come up through great tribula- 
tion. In this way only can we become white-robed. 
This has been the experience of good men and 
women in every age of the world, and will continue 
to be down to the end of human history and be- 
yond. It relates to individuals and organizations 
alike. In heaven as on earth there will be intel- 
lectual and spiritual advancement ; this process will 
go on endlessly without reaching finality, and the 
law of progress, there as here, will be struggle with 
environment. Such a law should have a large place 
in our thoughts, plans, ideals, and purposes of life. 



VI. 

THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY CEISIS AND 
THE KINGDOM. 



VI. 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS AND THE 

KINGDOM. 

The evolutionary work of the Almighty, often 
through long stages, appears to go on, if it moves 
at all, by the silent operation of some unseen law ; 
while yet in every department of nature there 
come, at set times, more or less distant, periods of 
crisis, of transition, and even of revolution, that 
terminate in some new order of life. 

Our physical globe appears to have passed 
through many such changes, as its mountain ranges 
and volcanic eruptions, its deep sea-soundings and 
shore-changes, its glacial periods, and great climatic 
variations and other seismic movements clearly 
reveal. In vegetable and animal life on the earth's 
surface the same law of uniform movement, ter- 
minating in crises periods, has evidently prevailed, 
as fossil remains of now extinct plants and animals 
of different species and classes, one succeeding 
another, give positive assurance. 
LoFC. " 



100 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

In human history there have been comparatively 
long reaches of apparent uniformity, of silent, often 
undiscovered growth and preparation for some sud- 
den evolutionary transition, that was the natural 
result of inherent causes, unobserved by the many, 
till the crisis was upon them. The briefest outline 
of human records, ancient and modern, would con- 
firm this view. A glance at the most ancient na- 
tions, as we know them, chiefly from long-buried 
but now discovered records, tells of their many 
years of prosperity, then of their failure to advance 
and, finally, of their consequent and sudden over- 
throw. The great crisis that came to the Hebrew 
people, and to the Roman nation, when Jesus, the 
Christ of God appeared and for which the world 
had long been in a course of preparation, strikingly 
illustrates the general course of history. The Ref- 
ormation of the sixteenth century shows that, for a 
long period, an almost apostate Church, by refusing 
to " keep step with God," had prepared herself for 
the great crisis that rent her asunder, established 
Protestantism, and opened a new door of hope for 
the world. Almost every century has furnished 
some illustration, general or local, of protracted 
preparation for coming events and then, of sudden 
shocks through which those events, for good or 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 101 

evil, have changed the current of local or of general 
history. 

The whole world is to-day in the throe of a 
greater evolutionary transition than has marked 
any other period in history. It is more general, 
deeper rooted, more sacred, far-reaching and uplift- 
ing than have been any, or many united, of its nu- 
merous predecessors. Many people do not see this, 
and if they did, they would do their utmost to pre- 
vent its advance. Vain attempt ! As well might 
they undertake to sweep back the ocean tides with 
a broom, or to roll back the tide of time, as to op- 
pose successfully the mighty crisis for which the 
world has long been preparing and which is, even 
now upon us, and is sure to increase and sweep on- 
ward till its great and solemn mission is accom- 
plished ! What the end will be, so far as this gen- 
eration is concerned, will depend largely upon the 
generation itself. God is back of all and our re- 
ward will be according to our works. 

Great changes must come, almost revolutionary 
changes ; and if they are accepted as God offers 
them, there is reason to hope that at no very dis- 
tant day the whole world will be drawn into the 
gospel of the kingdom. Of course, there will be 
set-backs and hindrances. Selfishness will every- 



102 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

where assert itself and struggle for supremacy. 
Outworn systems, methods and forms will die hard. 
Conservatism will resist ; but, if those who have 
eyes to see, use them wisely and move on as God 
leads the way, with confidence and courage, those 
grand results for which the world has been so long 
preparing, as many begin to see, will, in time, be 
successfully accomplished. 

The fact to be emphasized is, that the world is 
entering into a great evolutionary crisis, one in 
which good and evil, right and wrong, God and 
mammon stand face to face. Those who do not 
see this, or who deny it, are blind. 

The nineteenth century has been, on the whole, 
the greatest in human history. The twentieth cen- 
tury will be as much greater than the nineteenth as 
that has been greater than any of its predecessors, 
if possibly, the first be an exception. The great 
work of the last century has been largely prepara- 
tory. It has been the discovery and discussion of 
new aspects of truth, of principles and of revised 
ideals, as they relate to God, and especially to man 
with his fellow-man. General principles are now 
largely settled, and it will be the province of the 
twentieth century, if possible, to reduce these prin- 
ciples to practice, so that the right shall prevail and 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 103 

society, in all its parts, be harmonized with the law 
of love which is the central law of the moral uni- 
verse and so of Christ's kingdom. 

The coming struggle, here called a crisis, means, 
as the word signifies, separation that leads to a new 
order of things ; and the change may be sudden, or 
of prolonged duration. The term crisis is here used 
because no other single word seems to describe ex- 
isting conditions so well ; and it is used in a some- 
what limited sense to describe changes rather than 
the space of time to be occupied in producing them. 

In stating some of the foremost issues that must 
enter into the struggle or crisis of the twentieth 
century, I shall simply and in a few words give the 
points in controversy, without discussing them or 
expressing an opinion. Discussion and settlement 
are not my work ; it is that of the twentieth century. 
But something is gained for the kingdom by having 
clearly in view the issues, often interblended, that 
must be rightly disposed of before the gospel of the 
kingdom can come on earth as it is in heaven. 

Many of the disturbing questions of to-day, that 
may bring on a crisis, are sociological ; and this is 
comparatively a new field of study that lies much 
in the mist of uncertainty. When leading writers 
upon it can agree in their principles, and when 



104 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

sociology becomes a science, it may be that some 
knotty questions will find an easier solution than 
now seems probable. 

Some perplexing questions for the twentieth cen- 
tury to dispose of are the following : — I shall num- 
ber them for the sake of convenience. 

1. The inalienable rights of man and of labor. 
All men are not created equal as to heredity, 
natural ability, or environment. But all men have 
an inalienable right to life and liberty, if these 
rights have not been forfeited by crime. The poor 
and the rich have their respective rights ; but when 
we attempt to define and differentiate them, opin- 
ions clash. The two classes meet together and are 
mutually dependent, so that neither can prosper 
without the other. The wage-earner is entitled to 
a just reward for his labor ; but who is to decide 
what constitutes that just reward ? The rich man 
is apt to say that the law of supply and demand 
must settle it ; but this is denied. Then the rich 
claim that the poor have no good ground for com- 
plaint, since they are better paid, housed, fed and 
educated than they were a hundred years ago. 
The poor man's reply is that, if wages have in- 
creased, so has the necessary cost of living ; and 
that the laborer's condition relatively to that of his 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 105 

employer, is not better, but worse, than it was 
many years ago ; and also, that the employer be- 
comes rich from the earnings of the laborer, while 
he gets as his reward, only enough to keep himself 
and family in existence, and that this state of 
things is a violation of the inalienable rights of 
man. So the two parties accuse and condemn each 
other. One claims that the other has no need to 
be poor, and that if he is so, it is his own fault. 
The other retorts that the rich man becomes rich 
by oppressing the poor, and that in such a world as 
this, of want and woe, no man has a right to be 
rich; that, instead of hoarding his wealth, he 
should share it with the poor and needy who are as 
good as he. This central point of controversy is 
for the twentieth century rightly to adjust. 

2. Combination of capital. Once, there was 
very little of what we call capital to combine ; 
now, it has increased a thousandfold, and a large 
part of it is in the hands of a few individuals, or of 
corporations. Wealth is, to-day, being combined 
in great trusts, under different names ; and it looks 
as if in a short time, these trusts would own and 
control the world. Have such combinations a right 
to exist, and if so, under what conditions and for 
what ends ? Those in the " combines " have their 



106 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

grounds of defense which they deem unanswerable. 
Their opponents claim that trusts exist for three 
selfish reasons : 1. To control the price of labor. 
2. To control the whole class of business that 
enters into the trust, and 3. To sell their goods at 
as high rates as the people will endure ; — all selfish 
reasons. This vital and knotty question of trusts 
the near future must adjust, if there is to be peace 
in the land. 

3. Combinations of labor. It is, perhaps, not 
unnatural that when capital combines against 
labor that labor should, in turn, combine against 
capital. Accordingly we find wage-earners, espe- 
cially in factories and mining fields, organizing 
unions and great societies, under different names, 
evidently to counteract the supposed intentions of 
their employers. They, too, have, it is said, three 
ends in view: 1. To compel employers to pay 
satisfactory wages. 2. To dictate to monied cor- 
porations whom they may and may not employ, 
and 3. To prevent wage-earners of their own 
crafts from getting work unless they consent to 
join their unions. This is a serious condition of 
things. Two powerful and closely related organi- 
zations stand almost in battle array against each 
other. Adjustment must come or the cord that 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 107 

binds them together will be broken, and what 
then! 

4. Strikes and strikers. Corporations claim that 
they have a right to employ whom they will; and 
laborers claim the right to strike or quit work 
when, for any reason, they are dissatisfied. And 
union strikers not only refuse to work themselves, 
but refuse to allow other workmen to take the 
places that they vacate. These rights are claimed 
and denied. Who shall surrender, and on what 
conditions ? is a vital question for the near future 
to decide. 

5. Wealth and poverty. Wealth is power and 
poverty is weakness, except when roused to mad- 
ness. The rich charge the poor with shiftlessness, 
laziness and the spending of their wage-earnings 
foolishly, as the cause of their poverty. A large 
class of the poor claim that the rich are bound to 
share their substance with the needy and especially, 
with honest workmen whose muscle, they say, 
creates the wealth of the world. What do justice 
and the gospel of the kingdom demand ? 

6. Money and righteousness. This is a ma- 
terialistic age. Money getting is the craze of our 
day. It is said that a large part of the business of 
the world is virtually gambling, or some other 



108 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

form of overreaching dishonesty ; and that this 
state of things is not only unrighteous, but is 
becoming intolerable. How shall men, it is asked, 
be induced, or compelled, if necessary, to observe, 
in business transactions, the golden rule of Christ's 
kingdom ? Is money to be considered the highest 
good? And shall its acquisition, as in many 
quarters it now seems to be, constitute the chief end 
of life ? This is a question for the twentieth 
century to settle, not as an intellectual speculation 
but as a fact of experience. Shall practice and 
principle harmonize or converge ? 

7. Franchises and government ownership. 
There seems to exist, in many quarters, evidence of 
a disposition, on a gigantic scale, to get something 
for nothing. Corporations ask for great privileges, 
— trolley roads and franchises are examples, — from 
city, state, or nation, gratis, on the ground that 
their enterprises will benefit the people ; while, it 
is claimed that their real motive is to get possession 
of the people's property to enrich themselves ; and 
that this involves both deception and injustice. 
And besides, it is claimed that the people, and not 
speculators, should own and operate most of our 
internal improvements, in the interests of the 
public. Here is a great problem for the twentieth 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 109 

century to solve and it is not likely to be of easy 
solution. 

8. Marriage and divorce. The family institution 
is as old as the human race. It underlies both 
Church and State, and without it neither religion 
nor government could exist. Marriage is the family 
bond, and whoever undervalues or breaks that bond 
without sufficient cause, is the enemy of mankind. 
The institution of marriage is in peril, as any one 
who reads the daily papers or takes note of divorce 
statistics, must clearly see. Opinions are divided 
on this vital subject. Some hold that divorce is 
never allowable, except for one crime. Others 
name from one to a dozen grounds on which divorce 
is allowable. Where, between husband and wife, 
love and respect have changed to unreconcilable 
hatred, some would have the parties divorced as 
the less of two evils ; others would compel them to 
live together so long as life endures. This whole 
question of marriage and divorce, so vital to hu- 
manity, must have fresh thought and readjustment. 

9. Religion, theology, the Church and the king- 
dom. Every observing and thoughtful person must 
see that religion, to-day, is in a critical, disturbed 
and transitional condition ; not that true religion is 
in any more danger of being driven out of the 



110 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

world than light, air and life are in such danger. 
The danger consists in mistaking the nature of 
true religion. To the question, What is religion ? 
different answers are given. One class makes re- 
ligion, all true religion, to consist in love, — love of 
God and love of man, worship of God and service 
of man, and in this alone. Another larger and 
conservative class confuses religion with theology, 
with creeds, with traditions, with Church member- 
ship, and with rites and forms. These two con- 
ceptions are as wide apart as possible. One gives a 
sound basis for Christian unity ; the other lays the 
foundation for denominational and sectarian di- 
vision and strife. One puts religion in the heart 
and makes it a life ; the other puts religion in the 
intellect and makes it a belief, a dogma. One view 
belongs to the gospel of the Church ; the other, to 
that of the kingdom. The question, What is the 
true and vital religion that must everywhere be 
insisted upon, and what are other things, which, 
though important are not the genuine article nor 
essential to it, must be met and settled, if the 
Church is to hold her historic position and move on 
into the kingdom. The crisis is here and must be 
met. 

10. The nature and end of civil government. In 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. Ill 

the present state of the world, it is conceded, that 
civil government is a necessity and is ordained of 
God. But for what end or purpose should govern- 
ments exist and be administered ? This is a divi- 
sive question. A majority of rulers appear to think 
that governments exist for themselves and for their 
own enrichment and glorification ; while their sub- 
jects begin to feel that they should exist for the 
good of the people, and for that end only. This 
distinction is radical and one side or the other must, 
in the coming crisis, be victorious. 

Another point in civil government that demands 
adjustment, is this : Should government be an abso- 
lute monarchy, as in Russia, or a limited and con- 
stitutional monarchy, as in England, or a republic, 
as in the United States ? On one point there is 
certainty, namely : That the drift of the civilized 
world is towards a form of government that shall 
be of the people, by the people and for the people. 
The drift is towards larger liberty. These govern- 
mental questions cannot be settled hastily, and may 
await evolutionary and educational developments ; 
but they cannot be long delayed. 

11. Politics, as a trade. It is claimed that the 
great majority of politicians make politics a trade 
or profession, and that they serve their country for 



112 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

personal and party ends, and not for their country's 
good. Political bosses and those who serve under 
them, it is said, control legislation and secure civil 
appointments much as if they owned the govern- 
ment, and were running it for what they can get 
out of it. Their motto is : " To the victors belong 
the spoils." Of course, there are genuine states- 
men ; but if half of what is charged against profes- 
sional politicians be true, here is a crying and peri- 
lous crime, — a nest of vipers, — that the twentieth 
century must attack and destroy. Politics must not 
be a sham. Is it, or is not so now ? 

12. The negro question. This nation has 
about eight millions of negroes. Slavery is abol- 
ished, and the black man, by law is, at the polls, 
the peer of his white neighbor. And yet, the black 
man is almost everywhere ostracized. While chat- 
tel slavery is abolished, shall state laws be allowed 
to hold him in ignorance and practical bondage? 
"What shall be done with the negro, and what is to 
be his future condition in this land ? is one of the 
gravest questions of the coming crisis that must be 
studied and settled on principles of right and jus- 
tice. 

13. International war. War and especially, 
international war, in past ages, was the business of 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 113 

the world, or rather, of kings and rulers. By one 
class wars are applauded and soldiers are patriots 
of the highest order. Another class holds that war 
is barbarous, that it is the tax and burden of the 
world ; that it is needless, and that civilized nations 
should put their ban upon it and settle international 
disputes in courts of arbitration. 

And yet, if we look abroad, we find every nation 
raising and equipping great armies, building war 
ships and forts, inventing guns and engines of de- 
struction, and exhausting their resources in prepara- 
tion for war. Never in the world's history, it is 
said, were the nations doing so much in the work 
of preparation for war as they are to-day. What, 
it is asked, can all this signify, if it does not mean, 
somewhere in the twentieth century, such an awful 
international war as history has never witnessed ? 
The war-crisis is here ; compromises will not settle 
it ; and it is for this generation to find and apply 
some principle of righteousness that shall expel the 
spirit and practice of war from the world and make 
its ravages never again possible. 

This long list of critical situations might be 
longer ; and the question now arises : How is the 
twentieth century to deal with them? Different 
lines of action may be taken. 



114 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

One possibility would be for the century to shut 
its eyes to existing facts, and to ignore, belittle, or 
deny them, asserting that no unusual condition of 
things exists and that it is safe and best to let 
events take their course and, by evolutionary proc- 
ess work out results. If men were irrational be- 
ings and cowards in addition, such a course might 
be excusable, but not otherwise. Doubtless, some 
of the many issues stated in this chapter are less 
urgent and more easily disposed of than others ; 
but most of them demand earnest thought and 
prompt endeavor, if clashing crisis is to be avoided. 

Another way of meeting the coming crisis is to 
attempt settlement by means of compromises. 
Compromise has been the American method of 
settling differences. It was so with the demands of 
slavery; and this plan is being adopted now, in 
connection with strikes and their causes. Indeed, 
in all directions, men seek to compromise ; and, to 
a certain extent it is proper to do so. But com- 
promises are never a finality. They only postpone 
the real issue. They are only make-shifts for the 
hour. Jesus never proposed compromise, nor does 
the gospel of the kingdom on questions of right and 
wrong. 

Still another mode of meeting issues is, for wise 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRISIS. 115 

men to study thoroughly, scientifically and without 
prejudice, the questions at issue, and to continue 
this investigation until the right and the wrong 
that are in them come clearly into view and stand 
over against each other; then, let a square and 
firm position be taken and maintained for the right 
and against the wrong, and let the moral and in- 
tellectual struggle go on, without compromise, till 
right, justice and truth are established in the earth. 
This is the manly and Godlike way of procedure. 

But suppose that all these and other pacific meas- 
ures fail, then, finally, will come violence and the 
" tug of war." Should such a dire calamity befall 
the century let the wrong, the selfish, the unworthy 
and those alone, be the attacking party. In such 
a struggle the right would surely win and the crisis 
come to a glorious termination for the gospel of the 
kingdom. But my hope is, and it is a confident 
hope, that the great crises of the twentieth century 
will be settled by reason and not by violence. 

It is by evolutionary movements like these, often 
slow in preparation, and then, when the ripened 
time of crisis arrives, rapid in action, that the world 
is being freed from darkness and bondage, and 
slowly but surely led into the light and liberty of 
the gospel of the kingdom. Any attempt to antici- 



116 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

pate and force the natural order of events may lead 
to failure ; but when, in the providence of God, the 
time for action has come, as I believe it now has, 
let the sons and daughters of the kingdom know 
that this is their day of opportunity, and the har- 
vest time for the fruitage of the kingdom. Should 
the twentieth century, in this critical hour, falter 
and fail, it may soon, in reproof, hear a voice from 
heaven speaking to it, in the words of Mordecai to 
Esther, at the opening of a great Hebrew crisis. 
" If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, 
then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise 
from another place." If the twentieth century is 
not equal to the demand, then the twenty-first must 
take up its work and so on to the end; for, as 
surely as time endures, the gospel of the kingdom 
must be established on earth as it is in heaven ; and 
this by the combination of human and Divine 
agency. 



VII. 

A TKUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE OPEN 
DOOKWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 



VII. 

A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE OPEN DOORWAY 
INTO THE KINGDOM. 

It is said of Daniel Webster, (whether the story 
is literally accurate does not matter) that once, 
when dining with a company of distinguished men, 
one of the party asked this question: "Mr. Web- 
ster, what of all the great subjects that have oc- 
cupied your thoughts, and on which you have 
spoken, do you consider the greatest ? " anticipa- 
ting, no doubt, that he would reply that his great- 
est theme was the Constitution of the United 
States, and that his greatest speech was his reply to 
Mr. Haine of South Carolina. The man was mis- 
taken. Mr. Webster paused a moment in silence, 
and then answered: "The greatest subject that 
ever occupied my mind is the thought of Almighty 
God and the relation we sustain to Him and He 
sustains to us." A greater and nobler reply never 
fell from mortal lips. 

The world of mankind has many needs, small 
and great ; but the profoundest of them all is the 

119 



120 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

need of a true, experimental knowledge of God. 
Such knowledge is, itself, eternal life. It is 
written : This is life eternal that they might know 
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou 
hast sent. 

The human soul is full of restlessness, of longing 
and of rush after something, it knows not what; 
but something that it does not possess. All history 
is but a record of the world's struggles for the un- 
known, yes, at bottom, for the unknown God. 
The Athenians built an altar to this unknown 
God and worshiped Him as one afar off and a 
stranger, though He was not far from any one of 
them. All the religions of the world, the highest 
and the lowest, are a search after God. Not re- 
ligious people alone, but the irreligious, the worldly, 
the wicked and even sensualists, are in search of 
something that can satisfy; and only the infinite 
satisfies. Often they know not what they want, 
but they do know that they want something not 
yet possessed. 

Unbelievers, skeptics and agnostics are no ex- 
ception. They try to solve the mysteries of life. 
God's infinity and the vastness of His evolutionary 
operations bewilder and create uncertainty, so that 
doubt and unbelief are not unnatural. Honest denial, 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 121 

with earnestness of purpose may be more acceptable 
to God, and more helpful to men than thoughtless, 
traditional faith that leads only to formality, pro- 
fession and perfunctory service can be. Character 
resides in the hearts of men, and if the heart is set 
on finding the truth, it is then following, unwisely 
it may be, after God, and so far is accepted of Him. 
My point is that all men, the good and bad alike, 
are reaching out in different ways after the supreme 
good, and they will possess it when they come to 
find and know the only living and true God. 

Of course, no finite being, in this world or in any 
other, can have a complete or perfect knowledge of 
the infinite God. Only infinity can perfectly com- 
prehend the infinite. And yet, the processes of 
evolution are continually bringing God more and 
more within the comprehension of men, and so 
within the range of personal experience. Some of 
the processes by which we approach God and gain 
such knowledge of Him as leads into the gospel of 
the kingdom are the following : 

1. Pure reason, in the department of metaphys* 
ical philosophy, leads to some vague conception of 
God. It gives us the universal law of causality, 
and traces that law back to the first cause, which 
it affirms must be eternal, infinite and absolute. 



122 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Reason reaches a conception of the infinite, partly 
from the study of the finite and the not finite, and 
partly infinity of space and duration suggests the 
idea of causal infinity. Reason affirms alike the 
necessity and the incomprehensibility of a first 
cause. Whether that first cause is a personality, 
endowed with intellectual and moral attributes, or, 
whether it be simply force, or, at most, some power 
in the universe that makes for righteousness, reason 
alone can neither affirm nor deny. Little as this 
may seem, it is something to know that whatever 
is finite, is not self-existent, but has back of it an 
infinite cause. And it would seem to be self-evident 
that finite nature cannot be self-originated, since 
potentiality can never become actuality, except as 
it is produced by a cause back of itself. If strict 
Pantheism is an absurdity, then there must be an 
infinite, absolute Being back of what we call na- 
ture, from whom all movements proceed. We have 
then, here, a philosophic foundation that necessi- 
tates and partly discloses, God as infinite and su- 
preme. 

2. Traditional and authoritative testimony con- 
cerning God does something, and with many much, 
towards revealing God and leading into the gospel 
of the kingdom. A traditionary belief in God, and 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 123 

of religion as being the worship and service of God, 
has been handed down through all the ages. This 
belief has been taught in homes and in Sun- 
day-schools to children, has been formulated in 
creeds, printed in books and preached everywhere 
from the pulpit. As a natural and necessary result, 
most people in Christian lands believe in God and 
in the Christian religion. This, certainly, is a vast 
gain over what would exist had such teaching been 
entirely withheld. 

Still, the great fact must not be overlooked that 
a belief in God and in religion from personal con- 
viction and experience, is one thing, and that a be- 
lief in what others think and say about Him is 
often quite another. One is a first-hand and the 
other a second-hand faith. One is a personal faith, 
an experience of God, the other is a belief in what 
others say about Him; a second-hand traditional 
faith that great multitudes possess without being at 
heart, Christians at all. Such a faith leads often to 
profession, to formality, to perfunctory service. It 
often makes people sectarians, zealots for doctrine, 
bigots in their treatment of others, heresy-hunters 
and most uncharitable towards all who differ from 
themselves. 

Or, a second-hand faith may lead to utter indif- 



124 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ference. The Pharisees in Christ's day are good 
illustrations of a traditionary faith. Authority is 
largely the bond by which the Eoman Catholic 
Church is held together. It is this second-hand 
traditional faith that sustains and perpetuates Mo- 
hammedanism and that accounts for the tenacity 
with which Buddhists cling to Buddhism. While 
its value to Christianity is not denied, still, the re- 
ligion that Jesus taught and that man needs is per- 
sonal experience, and not formal second-hand 
assent ; it is a thing of the heart more than of the 
head ; it is life and peace and not cold acceptance 
of what others believe and teach. 

3. If we would find and know God truly, we 
must begin by seeking Him in ourselves. Man is 
created in God's image. Not as to character, but 
as to attributes, he is configured to the Almighty, 
not in degree, but in kind. If this be so, then God 
is mirrored in ourselves, and in ourselves we must 
find His reflection. I do not speak of form, but of 
spirit. What I am in a limited finite sense, God is 
in an unlimited and absolute sense. If I find in 
myself the power of thought and rationality, even 
in a low degree, I know that God, my Maker, must 
possess this power in infinite perfection. If I find 
myself possessed of will power, I must infer that 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 125 

God, who imparted this to me, has the same power 
in unlimited measure. If I find myself in the pos- 
session of moral faculties, of conscience, of a sense 
of right and wrong and of clear convictions of 
responsibility and of duty, then I know that these 
gifts came from God, and that He has the same in 
infinite proportions ; for what God has in any de- 
gree, He must possess in an infinite degree. Hu- 
man intuitions must be the reflex of divine intui- 
tions. 

It is no contradiction of terms to say that we 
must find God in ourselves, and then to add that 
we must find ourselves in God. Only as we know 
God, do we really know ourselves ; for in God alone 
do we come to realize our privileges, possibilities 
and final destiny. This seeking to find God in our- 
selves and ourselves in God, is not a new idea, but 
it is a mine of precious truth that has been more 
worked of late than ever before. The deeper 
we delve into it, the richer is the reward. And 
when we come to find God as fully outlined in our- 
selves, and ourselves as fully revealed in the light 
of God, then we shall have an open door into the 
gospel of the kingdom. This is the need and privi- 
lege of the whole human race. 

4. God is revealed to men still further in the 



126 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

realm of physical nature, if only we have eyes to see 
and hearts to feel the great revealing. It is largely 
through the imagination and not by logical process, 
that we find God in His works. Whether we studv 
God in the minute atom, so infinitesimal that the 
best microscope can hardly reveal it, and yet, that 
may contain potentialities that make and mould 
living beings on the face of the earth ; or whether 
we study Him in the acorn that contains the spread- 
ing oak in embryo, or whether we study Him in 
the starry heavens deep and infinite, " ever singing 
as they shine, the hand that made us is divine," or 
whether we study Him as He reveals Himself in 
human hearts and lives, — in whatever way we pene- 
trate the archives of nature,— we find ourselves 
standing face to face with God ; and we feel His 
inspiration and His uplifting power. If " An unde- 
vout astronomer is mad," equally so is the man who 
can look upon the leafy and flowery outbursts of 
springtime, or upon the glorious wealth of autumn 
and not have his soul attuned to the spirit of lofty 
praise and adoring worship. 

Until of late, and in some quarters until now, 
this finding God in the realm of nature, " in rocks 
and rills, in lakes and hills," has been depreciated 
and distrusted as inimical to the Bible, the creeds 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 127 

and the pulpit, and as conducive to sentimental and 
feeble Christian life. Thoughtful men are begin- 
ning to see that, indeed and in truth, — The heavens 
declare the glory of God and the firmament show- 
eth His handiwork; that day unto day uttereth 
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge ; 
that their line has gone out through all the earth 
and their words to the end of the world. 

5. This brings us to a fifth and closely related 
avenue through which God may be seen and known. 
It is the avenue of Divine Immanence. In some 
general dogmatic sense, the idea of the omnipres- 
ence of God has been accepted ; but the modern 
conception of Divine Immanence carries a new and 
larger meaning. The old thought was that God is 
seated somewhere in the heavens, on a great white 
throne from which, in some mysterious way, He 
regulates and controls the affairs of the universe. 
That conception is now enlarged and has had 
breathed into it the spirit of life. 

The finite universe is an emanation from God. 
It is not independent and self -existent ; nor is the 
finite and natural created out of nothing. Such a 
thing is unthinkable. From nothing, nothing 
comes. There is something of God in everything 
that exists ; in the solid earth and in every living 



128 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

thing on its surface, there God is. Nature is not 
God, but God is in, through, above and beneath all 
that we call nature. Evolution is creation ; it is 
God revealing Himself in His works. God is in 
everything that we see, hear and think about, in 
every storm and wind and wave, in every star that 
studs the heavens, in every plant, tree, and flower 
that grows on earth, in every animal and, most of 
all, in man who bears His own image. This is not 
Pantheism, because all emanations or created things 
are finite, and God is infinite and is infinitely more 
and beyond all that emanates from Him. 

This conception of God brings Him near to us. 
In Him we do indeed live and move and have our 
being. He is as near to us as we are to ourselves. 
To realize all this as a truth of experience is a long 
step towards finding and knowing God and is a 
doorway into the kingdom. 

6. If God is revealed to men in nature He is 
much more fully revealed in Jesus Christ who is 
God manifest in the flesh. Jesus Christ revealed 
the moral character of God, the heart of God, His 
fatherhood, His love His mercy and the brotherhood 
of man, as they had never been revealed before. 
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Him- 
self. To know Christ is to know God. These now 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 129 

familiar truths are the highest and fullest revela- 
tions that God has made of Himself to men ; and 
they could only be made through one who person- 
ates and represents Himself. How do we find God 
in and through Christ ? 

There are three ways in which one rational being 
can be truly found and known of another. How, 
for example, might one have known, in the fullest 
sense of that term, such a man as Abraham Lin- 
coln ? 1. By listening to what those who knew 
him well had to testify in his behalf and by read- 
ing what had been written about him. 2. By 
reading what he himself may have spoken and 
written as expressive of his own thoughts on great 
subjects. 3. By enjoying the opportunity of intimate 
personal acquaintance and a lifelong friendship. 

In all these ways we may know Jesus Christ and 
His and our Father whom He personated and per- 
fectly represented. Thousands upon thousands of 
the living and the dead bear testimony concerning 
Jesus and God in Him, that is full of divine and 
blessed revelation. Then, the words that Jesus 
spoke and the things that He did while on earth, 
lead us more and more into a knowledge of the 
heart and purpose of God. Now, if we can add to 
all this an intimate personal acquaintance with 



130 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

Christ and with God in and through Him, as many 
do, it would seem that such knowledge must be 
almost complete. In these three ways what multi- 
tudes of people have found God and been led into 
the gospel of the kingdom ! 

7. And yet, God is to be found in another, a 
deeper and more experimental way than any of the 
preceding indicates. We may become as personally 
conscious of God as we are of ourselves and of the 
objects that surround us. Consciousness is a knowl- 
edge of one's own states and experiences. It is not 
interior experience only, but knowledge and ex- 
perience of things exterior to ourselves that come 
within the radius of consciousness. We may then 
become conscious of God in whom we live and 
move and have our being. Jesus was conscious of 
God as He was of Himself when He said : " I and 
My Father are one. He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father." And in His prayer that His 
followers might be one in Him, and He in them, as 
He and the Father were one, showed that it was 
possible for His disciples to be conscious of God, 
even as He was conscious. When Paul says: I 
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and, again, 
For me to live is Christ, — he must have had an ex- 
perience, a consciousness of God even as he had of 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 131 

himself. He had attained to such an inter-dwelling 
with God, his purpose and life were so merged in 
the divine purpose and life that they seemed to be 
one, and they fell equally within the field of con- 
sciousness. In his prayers he talked with God as 
friend talks with friend, and with the same con- 
sciousness of a double presence. This experience of 
God-consciousness is not something that one can 
communicate to another. Each must know it for 
himself, or he cannot know it at all. " What man 
knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man 
which is in him. Man possesses a double nature, 
consisting of body and spirit. The spiritual or 
ethereal body is our real self, and, at times, spirit 
rises so above material things as to see and feel the 
invisible, to see and know God, and divine things, 
almost as they are seen and known in the ethe- 
realized world. The least that can be said is that 
such an experience is soul-satisfying, and is itself 
eternal life. It is being in the kingdom. 

8. How may this state of God-consciousness be 
attained and perpetuated ? I answer, it is the fruit 
of the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and 
reveals them unto us. The dispensation of the 
Spirit is the greatest of all dispensations, because it 
is more spiritual than any other. It brings the 



132 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

heart of man into direct, unveiled contact with the 
heart of God ; it brings to him clear vision and 
lofty inspiration, and enables him, in the full con- 
sciousness of the Divine presence to exclaim, Abba 
Father. 

But there are conditions upon which this inter- 
communication and consciousness of God may come 
into human lives. What are these conditions ? It 
comes, so far as man is concerned, of a longing 
desire to find and know God, and of utter self -sur- 
render to Him. No partial surrender, with mental 
and conscious reservations, no mere intellectual 
assent avails anything. There must be universal, 
unconditional surrender, including all one has, is, 
and hopes to be in this life and beyond, as the 
price of securing consciously the witness of the 
spirit. In such a surrender the Holy Spirit comes 
to us with wonderful revelations of God's presence, 
pouring such measures of divine light, love and life 
into our souls as satisfy every conscious want. All 
doubt vanishes, the heart is filled with satisfying 
peace and great joy. Such ones come into the 
Holy of holies where they are as conscious of 
God as they are of themselves. They now un- 
derstand and have entered into the gospel of the 
kingdom. 



A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 133 

Enough, I hope, has been said, in illustrating so 
briefly these eight ways of finding God, to show 
that a true knowledge of God is possible, and that 
it constitutes man's greatest need, and is the open 
doorway into the gospel of the kingdom. Count- 
less thousands have entered Christ's kingdom along 
this avenue, and have finished their course and re- 
ceived their crown. Great multitudes now living, 
of all lands and of all religions, are seeking and 
finding God. Many have already found Him, and 
others are pressing on, often with obscured vision, 
but with inspiring hope, after a true knowledge of 
the living God. This great experience is broaden- 
ing throughout the world. Never was there such 
a search after God by so many people throughout 
the earth and of all ranks and conditions in life, as 
there are to-day. This is a great and hopeful omen. 
Every one who finds the prize draws others after 
him. The time must come when the whole world, 
in a broad and liberal sense will know God and 
Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, and this knowl- 
edge is eternal life. This day will come through 
evolutionary struggle with environment in the 
moral and spiritual world. It may be long in 
coming, but the end is sure, for God is back of all, 
and in all, and His plan and purpose never part. 



134 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

God is not a failure. When it comes, evil will fly- 
away and the gospel of the kingdom will be estab- 
lished on earth as it is in heaven. God speed the 
day! 



VIII. 

KELIGIOUS AND CHUKCH AGENCIES THAT 
LEAD INTO THE KINGDOM. 



VIII. 

RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES THAT LEAD 
INTO THE KINGDOM. 

The world is full of agencies that work directly 
or indirectly for the gospel of the kingdom. One 
class of these agencies is professedly religious and 
belongs largely to the Christian Church. Another 
class makes no such profession, while yet it is 
working for the kingdom. This chapter will be 
occupied with agencies of the professedly religious 
order. 

And first of all, what is religion ? Keligion is 
truth vitalized. All truth is religious, and all relig- 
ion is living truth ; not truth in the abstract, but 
truth as a vital principle in the hearts and lives of 
men. Truth and religion are inseparable, and are 
unified in God, who is the source and sum of all 
living truth and of all true religion. The heart of 
living truth is love, and God is love, and love is 
God ; and this because love is life, is purity, is holi- 
ness, justice, mercy and truth combined. Eeligion 
then, is the joint product of truth and love, not 

137 



138 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

either apart, but the two combined in human hearts 
and lives. Such religion not only leads towards 
the gospel of the kingdom, but it is that kingdom 
in its fulness and power. "When the living truth 
of love comes into the hearts of all men, then 
Christ's kingdom will have come on earth as it is 
in heaven. 

This is religion from an intellectual point of 
view. Practically considered, religion finds its best 
illustration in the life of Jesus. 

The Old Testament prediction of the Messiah 
and of His mission, as quoted by Jesus in the Syna- 
gogue at Nazareth is in these words : He hath sent 
Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captive and recovering of sight to the 
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
preach the acceptable year of the Lord. This was 
practical religion. It was Christ's mission, and 
how faithfully He fulfilled it. From first to last 
His sympathies were with the poor, the weak, the 
afflicted, the sorrowful, the neglected, the dis- 
couraged and the wronged. He went about doing 
good and this was literally the work of His life. 

Jesus emphasized the duty of repentance, and 
the need of turning from all selfishness to a life of 
benevolence and well-doing. He proclaimed great 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 139 

principles of truth and righteousness, and declared 
that true freedom comes through a practical knowl- 
edge of the truth. And yet He placed practical 
duties above intellectual theories. He taught, and 
insisted upon, the most rigid of ethical systems, 
and especially, that every man should love his 
neighbor as he loved himself. Love from the 
heart, expressed in life, was the sum of Jesus' 
religion, and it is the religion of the kingdom. 

In the light of this standard we may study that 
class of agencies for the kingdom that is called 
religious, and that centres largely in the Christian 
Church. The Church herself is the foremost of 
these agencies, and claims our first attention. We 
have already seen that the Church is less than the 
kingdom ; we have also seen what the Church has 
been and done in the past, and we have glanced at 
her present condition. We have now to ask, What 
is the Church, as a world agency, to be and do in 
the future for the gospel of the kingdom ? What 
she could and should be and do is one thing, and 
what she actually will or may be and do is quite 
another. 

I confidently believe that if the Church fully 
realized her power, her opportunity and her privi- 
lege, and if she were fully prepared to meet exist- 



140 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ing and coming exigencies, that, in a comparatively 
short space of time, she would herself fully enter, 
and draw the whole world into the gospel of the 
kingdom. My hope is that after some further un- 
successful struggle, the Church will come to see and 
feel her deficiencies, and her need of a broader 
platform than the one on which she is now stand- 
ing. If she does this, as both internal and external 
pressure is strongly urging her to do, then her con- 
tinued prestige and power are assured. If the 
Church leads the way the world is prepared, or is 
preparing to follow her lead, as the wake follows 
the ship on a smooth and open sea. Denomi' 
national and sectarian barriers are breaking down ; 
restlessness is universal, the door of hope is open- 
ing, and there is ground for confident expectation 
that the Church will be the greatest of all agencies 
for the coming of the kingdom. 

Observation from all quarters encourages this 
hope. On every hand the Christian Church is 
modifying and enlarging her view of religion. 
Compare the present with one hundred or even fifty 
years ago, and how much less exclusive, and more 
generous towards each other the Churches are now 
than they were then. In doctrine, although creeds 
may remain the same, ministers and members are 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 141 

less creed-bound and they enjoy greater freedom 
than they did formerly. Preaching the gospel 
means more now than it was once thought to mean. 
It covers a wider range of subjects. The pulpit has 
a larger liberty. The majority of Church members 
desire and expect their ministers to study the moral 
aspects of all questions of public interest and to 
expound them to the people. These and other 
corresponding changes inspire hope that the Church 
will continue to move onward, enter fully into the 
kingdom herself and draw the world after her. 

Then, again, this general view is yet further en- 
couraged if we study the class of religious agencies 
that have been organized from the Church, and 
many of them by the Church, and that are working 
largely for the gospel of the kingdom. I know it 
has been claimed, and with some reason, that the 
Church now has within herself, and hanging upon 
her skirts, too many of such separate organizations. 
Their great number, it is said, is explained by the 
fact that many things need doing, and that, as the 
Church is not ready or willing to undertake them, 
individuals in the Church and out of it organize 
societies to meet the emergency. The Church, it is 
said, is too much organized ; that is to say, she 
ought herself to do the work that these separate 



142 TEE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM, 

societies undertake to perform. Granting this, it 
yet remains true that most of these " wheels within 
wheels " are doing work that needs doing, and that 
otherwise would be neglected. 

Christian missions, home and foreign, twin 
daughters of the Church, head the list of religious 
agencies that are working towards the gospel of the 
kingdom. Christ intended that His kingdom in 
the world, by whatever name it was called, should 
be a missionary movement ; and He commissioned 
His disciples to go into all the world and preach 
the gospel to every creature. How this commission 
throughout the centuries has been regarded by the 
Christian Church cannot now be told. 

Organized modern missions, in Protestant Chris- 
tendom, had their origin at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. Since then, missionary boards, 
home and foreign, have been organized and are 
controlled by the denominations they represent. 
Others, and some of the most efficient, were organ- 
ized and are conducted by Christian men outside of 
Church control ; but they, none the less, belong to 
the kingdom. 

The necessity for efficient missionary work, if 
Christ's kingdom is to come on earth as it is in 
heaven, is obvious. How otherwise could the 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 143 

gospel news of the kingdom be carried to unchris- 
tian people ? Settlements in the newer portions of 
our own country, and of other lands, are largely 
dependent, often for years, — if churches are to be 
sustained, — on outside support. In unchristian 
lands this necessity is still greater. Hence the need 
of both home and foreign missionary societies is 
imperative. There is work for them everywhere, 
and the congested portions of great cities are not 
the least needy. 

The good that missionary labors have accom- 
plished in their various fields is incalculable. 
Where would our country and the world be to-day 
but for mission service and support ! Criticize this 
class of operations as some do, still the fact remains 
that mission work is indispensable. The time will 
come when the gospel of the kingdom will have 
enlightened the whole earth. Then, it will be 
found that Christian missions will have had more 
to do with laying foundations, breaking up dead 
forms, sowing the seeds of truth and life, preparing 
the way of the Lord, and in bringing darkness into 
light and death into life, than is now even im- 
agined, especially \>y those who look on missions 
through eyes of prejudice. 

Eight or wrong, missionary boards are, just now, 



144 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

on trial in the court of the world. Their manage- 
ment at home, and their work on their fields is 
criticized. As a result, missionary treasuries are 
not filled ; and vast sums of money, not less than 
$50,000,000 a year is given, most of it by Christian 
men, to educational and other institutions outside 
of Church control, and partly for that reason. 
Such facts suggest not that missionary work is un- 
necessary, but that missionary managers and work- 
ers should review and revise their methods and 
make them conform, if they do not, to sound 
business principles, and to existing conditions and 
needs, as seen in the new light that observation 
and experience have cast upon them. 

Great changes and improvements have been 
made in the last fifty years in methods of mission- 
ary work in unchristian lands. Previously mission- 
aries were expected simply to preach the gospel, 
while the establishment of schools, and all efforts 
in the direction of general enlightenment and 
civilization were discouraged. Now it is far other- 
wise. Schools, often of high order, are established, 
and have great prominence; and while formally 
only delusion and evil were seen in the religious 
ideas and teachings of pagan nations, now mission- 
aries are disposed to look on the better side of the. 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 145 

religious with which they come in contact. Other 
great improvements, both in management and in 
work on the field, that should do much to silence 
criticism, and inspire confidence have been adopted. 
Missionary work, at home and abroad, is advancing 
in excellence as the decades come and go. Not till 
the gospel of the kingdom shall have come on earth 
as it is in heaven, can missionary agencies be set 
aside as unnecessary. 

Another class of almost sacred agencies which 
belong to the gospel of the kingdom, even more 
than to that of the Church, all born of Christianity, 
is the system of eleemosynary institutions, for the 
relief of suffering humanity, that we find honoring 
and blessing the people of every Christian land. 
These institutions are as numerous and varied, 
almost, as are the needs of a suffering world. Hos- 
pitals for the sick, homes for the aged and infirm, 
asylums for the blind, for the deaf and dumb, for 
orphans, and for imbeciles, — these are among the 
agencies that the gospel of the kingdom and, to 
some extent, that of the Church, have established 
and are supporting in all Christian lands as 
works of charity and love for the amelioration 
of human suffering. That all this is in accord 
with Christ's example and His teaching of 



146 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

the kingdom, is clearly revealed in the gospel 
record. 

Up to Christ's day suffering humanity, especially 
if joined to poverty, was left to suffer on and die 
of sheer neglect, and often with little feeling of 
sympathy. Among some of the ancient peoples it 
is said that the aged and helpless were often put to 
death, so that society might be rid of them and that 
their " living death " might come to a speedy end. 
Not till long after the gospel of the kingdom began 
to be preached were institutions for the unfortunate 
established ; and for generations later, they were 
few in number, narrow in range, rude in form, un- 
comfortable, and but poorly sustained. 

All this has passed away. Charitable institutions 
are now palatial structures ; and, as a rule, they 
occupy the most sightly and commanding positions 
in our large towns and cities ; and besides, they are 
richly furnished, largely endowed and are in the 
hands of managers and experts, so that now sick- 
ness and misfortune have almost lost their terrors. 
"While the Churches have done something, and in 
some directions much, towards bringing about such 
desirable results, yet, it must be conceded that a 
large part of the countless millions that have gone 
into the establishment and operation of eleemosy- 



RELIGIOUS AND CHUECH AGENCIES. 147 

nary institutions, have not come from Churches 
directly, but from parties who have been acting for 
themselves outside of Church control or responsi- 
bility. Nevertheless, this whole class of work be- 
longs to the gospel of the kingdom, as Jesus com- 
prehended and, in principle, proclaimed it. It is 
one of the great channels along which the world 
and the kingdom are flowing together towards the 
great consummation. 

It is due to the Christian Church to explain that 
while some of the agencies just referred to are not 
organized and controlled by the Church, as such, 
that still a large part of the money given and work 
done, is by Church members; and, in this sense, 
these agencies are Christian if they are not strictly 
Church enterprises. Should Church people with- 
draw their support, it is probable that not one of 
them could long survive. This great fact may not 
be obscured. 

Other religious agencies clustering around the 
Church, but not always of it, as they are of the 
kingdom, and that deserve larger notice, may be 
grouped together. I refer to such as relate chiefly 
to young people. Prominent among them are 
Sunday-schools, Societies of Christian Endeavor, 
Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Asso- 



148 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

ciations and many other organizations having dif- 
ferent names, but all working in the interests of 
young humanity. If the Church were as large as 
the kingdom, such separate organizations might not 
be called for ; but as things now are, they seem 
necessary and of great value. These institutions, 
though generally not under church control, have 
been the training schools of the Church, from 
which multitudes have come into its fellowship, 
bringing with them abundance of zeal and progress- 
ive energy. Where would the churches be to-day 
had they continued as they have been, and these 
young people's societies had never existed ! 

It cannot be expected of the "rank and file" 
that make up these societies, that many of them 
will be very large in experience, or profound in 
thought. But what they lack in experience, they 
make up in zeal; and deficiency in knowledge is 
offset by activity. They delight in great and 
showy conventions ; they run to and fro, and con- 
stitute the flying brigade in the Lord's army, and 
are a source from which great leaders in the work 
of the world are likely to arise. As their member- 
ship is drawn from all the Churches, their working 
together in the spirit of love and fellowship does 
much to break up sectarian exclusiveness, and so to 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 149 

help broaden the Church into the gospel of the 
kingdom. May Divine guidance attend their steps. 

Another important religious movement, and one 
that belongs more to the gospel of the kingdom 
than to that of the Church, lies in the department of 
general reform ; and of reform, not so much in in- 
dividual lives, as of reform where great evils and 
wrongs have entrenched themselves in communities 
and, sometimes, in nations. The Church has al- 
ways been persistent and zealous in her efforts to 
convert individuals from the world and bring them 
within the fold of the Church ; but as to great re- 
formatory movements outside of the Church, but 
not outside of the kingdom, she has had compara- 
tively, as an organization, but little to do. Eegard- 
ing them as not in her province, she has been often 
indifferent to them, and, sometimes, opposed where 
she should have been a faithful ally, if not the 
brave leader. 

"When Copernicus discovered and brought to light 
a new universe, and when Galileo affirmed that the 
earth went around the sun, the Church was then 
the chief foe that had to be met and vanquished. 
So it was when the age of the earth and the an- 
tiquity of man were made to extend far back of 
six thousand years ; and so it has been when any 



150 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

great scientific discovery has seemed to interfere 
with Church traditions. 

But it is with moral reforms rather than scien- 
tific movements that we are now chiefly concerned. 
Let us select one or two examples as illustrations 
of many others. The slavery question naturally 
suggests itself. Viewed in the light of Christ's law 
of love and of the gospel of the kingdom, " slavery 
was the sum of all villainies." And yet our 
Churches, for a long time, would not attack it. In- 
deed, they were often its bulwark of defense, de- 
claring that to preach against it was to preach 
politics and not religion, and to contradict Moses. 
But the reform belonged to the greater gospel of 
the kingdom ; the evolutionary upheaval was un- 
derneath slavery, and it had to fall ; and when the 
popular tide changed, the Church, as always, 
changed with it, and it now changed gladly. 

In what is known as the temperance reform, 
the Church has been far more active, but the larger 
gospel of the kingdom has been the foremost 
worker and must, in the end, accomplish the Divine 
purpose. In the field of socialistic reform, inclu- 
ding capital and labor, now agitating the world, and 
with which the gospel of the kingdom is so deeply 
concerned, because human interests are so deeply 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 151 

involved, — the Church very generally stands aloof 
and often gives as a reason, that the subject lies 
outside her field of labor. On questions of Biblical 
criticism and revised theological statement, such as 
advancing knowledge and the gospel of the king- 
dom call for, our Churches are only in a position to 
accept the inevitable when the reform is carried 
and assent becomes a necessity. To these state- 
ments there are numerous individual exceptions, 
and some Church exceptions. 

Prison reform, reform in the homes and houses 
of poor people, are questions in which the gospel of 
the kingdom and, in part, of the Church, is deeply 
interested. Indeed, the world is yet full of evils 
that call for correction, and the mission of the 
Church, as commonly understood and accepted by 
her leaders, is not large enough to enable her to 
meet as they should be met, the many cries for help 
that are coming up from all quarters. Even if she 
would gladly respond to them, her narrow platform 
would make such a response impossible. The gos- 
pel of the kingdom, which is large enough to em- 
brace them all, must be chiefly relied on for reform 
work, and the Church can become an efficient 
helper just in proportion as she broadens and moves 
on into the kingdom. The central point we are 



152 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

ever to keep in view is, that the kingdom is greater 
than the Church, and that the Church must flow 
into the kingdom if she is to be a world-wide re- 
former. 

Thus have passed in review a class of religious 
agencies that belong largely to the gospel of the 
Church and wholly to that of the kingdom. From 
this study, it is evident that the Church is moving, 
slowly it may be, but still, moving towards the 
kingdom. She is far in advance to-day of what she 
was fifty years ago, while yet, the gospel of the 
kingdom is vastly greater than is that of the 
Church. The future must determine as to whether 
or not the Church will throw off her denominational 
and sectarian bonds, broaden her thoughts and 
plans of work and keep pace with the evolutionary 
providence of God, until she is merged in the gospel 
of the kingdom. If she does this, the whole world 
will be drawn after her and heaven will be set up 
on earth. 

But, on the other hand, should she halt by the 
way and refuse to advance, other agencies would 
be raised up to take her place and do her work. In 
such a sad case the world would still move on, leav- 
ing the churches behind, a fleet of dismantled ships, 
drifting listlessly and helplessly on the troubled sea 



RELIGIOUS AND CHURCH AGENCIES. 153 

of the twentieth or some succeeding century. 
Standing on nay crumbling watch-tower and sur- 
veying the scene, past, present and future, I am en- 
couraged to believe that the Church will recognize 
the voice of God and be enlarged into the kingdom 
as Jesus saw and, in principle, proclaimed it to all 
the world. 



IX. 

AGENCIES FOE THE KINGDOM THAT LIE 
OUTSIDE OF THE CHUECH. 



IX. 

AGENCIES FOR THE KINGDOM THAT LIE OUTSIDE 
OF THE CHURCH. 

We have seen that all useful uplifting agencies, 
work for the kingdom, and that these agencies are 
of two classes. One class is of the Church and re- 
lates to religion, including the will, sensibility and 
in part, the imagination. The other is of the in- 
tellect, and includes the exercise and cultivation of 
all one's intellectual powers. Both are educational 
and elevating, and lead along different lines into 
the kingdom. 

The preceding chapter was upon agencies of the 
religious order. We are now to consider the other 
class of agencies that does not claim to be religious, 
that certainly does not belong to the gospel of the 
Church, but does belong to that of the kingdom, in 
the sense that it elevates mankind, socially, in- 
dustrially, intellectually and morally, and so pre- 
pares the world for the coming of the kingdom. 

I know it has been claimed that intelligence, 
morality, physical comfort and possessions are not 

157 



158 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

religious. "Well, all I care to say now, on that 
point, is that they are so essential to religion that a 
religion which is destitute of them must be of a very 
lovy order. It can be little more than superstition 
miscalled religion. Possibly men like Mr. Buckle, 
— and he represents a class, — may have exalted in- 
tellectual culture and physical prosperity too highly 
as compared with moral and spiritual advancement ; 
but they are right in claiming that these are a part, 
and a necessary part of the religious life of the 
world. 

What I now propose is to consider some of the 
second class of agencies which so belong to the gospel 
of the kingdom that it could never be established 
on earth as in heaven without their uplifting sup- 
port. Indeed, they must stand in the first rank of 
influences for that end. This is so evident that 
further argument on this point is unnecessary. 

Foremost among these agencies are schools, great 
and small, for the education of the people. Where 
Christianity is not the prevailing religion, children 
grow up in ignorance, and ignorance is the mother 
of superstition and of vice. In most anti-Christian 
lands but few of the people are able to read or 
write. This has always been so, and is still. In 
nominally Christian nations where the Church 



AGENCIES FOR THE KINGDOM. 159 

undertakes to control education in the interests of 
the Church, as in Spain, Italy, and Kussia, the busi- 
ness is so miserably managed that one-half of the 
inhabitants are wholly illiterate. The value of 
education is happily illustrated in what we see and 
enjoy in the United States. Our free school system, 
sustained by the government, and open to every 
child and youth of the land, secures general in- 
telligence ; and intelligence is the basis of civil 
liberty, of individual and family prosperity, and of 
national advance in all that is worth possessing. 
Our free school system is the nation's glory, and be- 
longs to the gospel of the kingdom. 

In addition to public schools, we have academies, 
colleges, universities and professional institutions 
almost without number ; and the best talent of our 
land, and its profoundest scholars have the guid- 
ance of these schools, especially in their upper 
ranks. And what limitless sums of money as well 
as of labor are expended upon them year by year. 
A part of this vast and ever-increasing investment 
is collected by taxation, but schools of high grade 
are nearly all of them supported by the voluntary 
gifts of men who know and appreciate their value. 
Men of vast wealth are coming to see the worth of 
great institutions of learning to the people, to the 



160 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

nations, and to the kingdom of God ; and to see and 
feel their own responsibilities and privileges in re- 
lation to them. It is estimated that about fifty 
millions of dollars annually are freely given, often 
millions at a time, for the enlargement and support 
of higher educational institutions. In the schools 
of the land about sixteen millions of children and 
young people are being educated; and what vast 
multitudes go out annually into business or profes- 
sional life to help build up and swell the tide of 
influences that sweep on into the gospel of the 
kingdom ! Educational movements are, indeed, a 
part, a large part, of that kingdom. Take the edu- 
cated men and women out of the world and what 
would there be left, either in fact or in prospect ! 
Where then would the gospel of the Church or of 
the kingdom be? If sound education is not an 
essential and necessary element of Christ's king- 
dom, then nothing is. 

"Works of art belong to the class of subjects here 
indicated ; and this, because of their aesthetic nature 
and tendency to enlarge, beautify and ennoble the 
human mind. Greek art, especially in the form of 
sculpture, which was carried by the Greeks almost 
to perfection, and was a part of their religion, had 
much to do with the civilization and elevation 



AGENCIES FOB THE KINGDOM. 161 

which distinguished that people above all others of 
their day. 

Architecture, almost equally with sculpture, is an 
ancient, as it is also a modern art. Some of the 
structures of Greek art, the Parthenon, for ex- 
ample, have been the admiration and models of all 
succeeding ages. Their three styles of column, 
always so attractive, have never been improved 
upon or superseded. 

During the rennaissant period, in Europe, archi- 
tecture, especially in the erection of cathedrals for 
Divine worship, took on a new form, in which 
nature and her forests became the model for imita- 
tion, and the Gothic style of architecture, succeed- 
ing severer forms, was the almost worshipful pas- 
sion of several centuries, and the craze still con- 
tinues. 

In this same period, painting, as a religious art, 
came into a prominence that it had never previously 
attained. It was idealistic rather than realistic in 
character ; and it meant helpfulness in the field of 
Christian conception and worship. If, in subse- 
quent generations, painting has become more showy, 
imitative and realistic, it has never reached the 
moral power, the sesthetic beauty which it attained 
in the Eaphaelistic age, .as the great interest still 



162 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

felt in old masterpieces, evinces. And yet, now 
and always, painting is the handmaid of religion ; 
and, with art, in every good form, is a large ele- 
ment in the gospel of the kingdom. 

Literature, using the word in its largest sense, is 
another great factor in the gospel of the kingdom, 
and is a powerful agency for its advancement. In 
ancient times there were comparatively few books, 
and these were all written by hand, and, when not 
chronicles, were, for the most part, books of relig- 
ion. As such, even while abounding in errors, they 
led the human mind Godward, A half truth, or 
truth and error more or less commingled, has its 
mission for good, otherwise what book would be of 
value ? 

In modern times, and especially in the nine- 
teenth century, books and libraries, public and 
private, have increased and are still increasing 
beyond all precedent. As for magazines, news- 
papers and other periodicals, the total amount is 
almost beyond the reach of computation. And 
their influence as public educators and in moulding 
the thought, character and life of the people is 
beyond that of any other single agency. Even our 
schools would be powerless, but for the books that 
are published in their interest. Mr. Carnegie is 



AGENCIES FOB THE KINGDOM. 163 

right in the estimate he puts on free libraries for 
all the people, and in giving his tens of millions for 
their establishment among the English-speaking 
people of the world. 

True, many books and periodicals should have 
been better than they are, and many others are 
worse than worthless, and should never have been 
published. But for all this, books and papers, what 
is called the world's literature, is one of the great 
uplifting agencies that, in many ways, is drawing 
the world into the gospel of the kingdom. Indeed, 
the pulpit itself, has now to vie with the printing 
press ; people are so educated and informed that the 
pulpit must be intelligent and progressive or lose 
its power. The Church must reckon with the press 
and with growing knowledge more than she has in 
the past, and with creeds, traditions and platitudes 
less, if she would meet existing necessities and 
work with, and not apart from, the kingdom of 
God. She must enlarge her conception of Church 
privilege and responsibility; and, indeed, she is 
doing it in many quarters. Men now care for good 
sermons, but not for poor ones. 

Coming now to the question of Invention, we 
have another of those influences that lie outside the 
Christian Church, and yet that belong to the gospel 



164 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGD03L 

of the kingdom, and have much to do with its ad- 
vancement. But for great discoveries the world 
might be to-day essentially where it was a thousand 
years ago. In every department of human activity 
we have inventions, and processes for doing things 
that were unknown to the people of one hundred 
years ago. The steel pen I am writing with was 
then a goose quill that required constant whittling. 
Our clothes are better, cheaper and differently 
manufactured. All the mechanic arts have gradu- 
ated from old time processes. The agricultural 
implements of to-day were not dreamed of as pos- 
sibilities a century ago. Think of one man culti- 
vating one hundred acres of grain alone, and rais- 
ing great crops ; or of his harvesting from twelve 
to fifteen acres of heavy wheat, cutting, binding 
and shocking it, all by himself, in one day ! In the 
manufacturing world the change has been still 
greater, so that in many departments one man, or 
woman even, can accomplish from ten to fifty times 
more than the same amount of labor produced 
within the memory of some now living. Whitney's 
cotton gin has performed miracles, if real miracles 
do actually take place. 

Not to deal with small things, let us glance at 
three familiar illustrations. The invention of the 



AGENCIES FOR THE KINGDOM. 165 

printing press marked a new era in the world's his- 
tory ; it brought first-hand knowledge to the com- 
mon people and made education a necessity. But 
the printing press of to-day, that can throw off a 
hundred thousand copies of great newspapers in an 
hour, all folded and ready for delivery, would in- 
deed have been a marvel to the old German who 
invented the clumsy hand-press and the still more 
clumsy type. Surely, in these days many run to 
and fro and knowledge is increased, all of which 
points and leads to the kingdom. 

Again : Take the application of steam, — one of 
the simplest and commonest agents in nature, — to 
various kinds of machinery, once wholly unknown 
to man, and what wonders have been wrought ! 
Think of huge iron vessels, sometimes with twenty 
thousand tons of carrying capacity, sweeping across 
the ocean, regardless of wind and wave, in as many 
days as was once required weeks, for a small wooden 
ship to make a summer voyage ! One vessel now 
does the work that a hundred formerly did. Turn 
from the ship to the railroad and the marvel, if 
possible, is still greater. See that great iron horse 
running fifty miles an hour, on an iron track, with 
a long line of parlor cars full of people at its heels ! 
Or see him again, dragging swiftly a hundred great 



166 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

wagons loaded with coal, holding ten tons each ; 
and as he winds past, half a mile long, one can 
hardly refrain from taking off one's hat and bow- 
ing in holy reverence ! Eo wonder that when Mr. 
Stevenson was told that the time would come when 
men would ride after steam engines at the rate of 
twenty miles an hour, he exclaimed, "I would as 
soon think of crawling into one of Congreve's mor- 
tars and being shot off for a rocket, as to risk my 
life in a train of cars running twenty miles an 
hour." What would he say now were he living on 
the earth ? Would he not think that he was, in- 
deed, riding into the kingdom of God ! 

But the greatest of all modern inventions is in 
the department of electricity. Lightning flashing 
in the heavens, amid peals of thunder, has always 
been an object of dread, as well as of admiration, 
to mankind ; and it was never conceived that so 
violent, and restless an element could ever be 
tamed, harnessed and held under men's control. 
Behold the change ! The whole continent, and 
every continent, is now strung with telegraphic 
and telephonic wires, and people separated by long 
distances converse with each other as freely almost 
as if they were seated together in an ordinary 
room. !Nor is this all. Oceans separating conti- 



AGENCIES FOB THE KINGDOM, 167 

nent from continent, no longer seem to exist. If 
San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, 
Berlin, St. Petersburg and cities in the far East, till 
we should come back to our starting-point, were 
all consolidated, as departments of one vast city, — 
as Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx are consoli- 
dated, — they would not, in reality, be much nearer 
each other, or more intercommunicable than they 
are now. Every morning before breakfast, we read 
from the daily papers of everything of general in- 
terest that may have taken place in any part of the 
globe in the preceding twenty-four hours. 

And yet, we are told by the wise ones that dis- 
coveries in the field of electricity are still in their 
infancy, that we are only at the portals, or, at best, 
in the vestibule of the great temple of electric 
wonders. "What the future is to reveal, the future 
only can disclose. When the revelations come, 
they will not be appeals to the imagination, but 
matters of actual observation and experience that 
all men will see and enjoy. Such discoveries and 
their fruits help to merge the gospel of the Church 
and the world into the kingdom, and to hasten its 
consummation. 

Commerce, or the interchange of commodities 
between commercial states and nations, now so de- 



168 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

pendent on electricity for intercommunication, is 
another agency that works in the interests of civili- 
zation, and so of the kingdom. Commerce has al- 
ways been in the world ; but what vast proportions 
it is now assuming ! Every available means of con- 
veyance by sea and land is taxed to its utmost in 
conveying to and fro, the products of mines, farms 
and factories from places of production into the 
reach of consumers in all parts of the world. This 
interchange of commodities is a great civilizer. It 
supplies needs and comforts, and creates friendly 
feeling, mutual interest, general information, a 
sense of brotherhood and of mutual dependence, 
and, in many ways leads into the gospel of the 
kingdom. Let commerce cease and the world 
would stagnate and return to barbarism. 

One other subject remains for brief notice ; and 
this is the great scientific movement of the world. 

Science, as represented by a class of studious men 
known as scientists, and religion, as represented by 
the Christian Church, have not, throughout the cen- 
turies, been in mutual sympathy and accord. They 
could not be. To a great extent they have been 
antagonistic ; and this antagonism has not been ac- 
cidental, or incidental. It has grown necessarily 
out of the radically different methods of investiga- 



AGENCIES FOR TSE KINGDOM. 169 

tion and conclusion adopted respectively, by the 
two classes of investigators. 

The scientific method has been, certainly for the 
last two or three hundred years, inductive, rational 
and evolutionary. That is to say, scientists, in 
place of beginning their investigations by laying 
down hypotheses or propositions to be proven, have 
begun with the collection and study of unmistak- 
able facts lying in their special fields of study. 
These facts when collected as numerously as pos- 
sible, have been classified, and then the question 
has been raised, — What conclusion do these un- 
deniable facts lead to and necessitate? What 
principle or truth of nature do they clearly reveal, 
establish and illustrate? That conclusion is ac- 
cepted as a logical sequence. It is no longer a 
problem, but a reality to be adhered to and fol- 
lowed, lead where it may. This is the scientific 
way of finding truth. 

The Church's method of reaching conclusions has 
been, and to a great extent still is, quite different. 
It often begins, not with facts, but with some pos- 
tulate, or dogma to be proven, and if stern facts 
rise in opposition, they must somehow be argued 
down or ignored. The fundamental assumption of 
the Church throughout the centuries has been and 



170 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

still largely is, that the Bible, in all its parts, is the 
inspired and inerrant word of God, and is the only 
infallible rule of faith and practice. Many are 
ready to accept the concensus of the Church, and 
ancient traditions written down in creeds and in 
ancient documents, as of almost equal authority 
with the Bible. But the point to be made is, that 
the Church rests her conclusions upon authority, 
rather than upon original investigation. Hence, 
any departure in faith or in practice from this rule 
of authority is denounced as heresy, as infidelity, to 
be dealt with accordingly. 

It is obvious that when two such systems of in- 
vestigation and conclusion meet on some common 
ground, there will be more or less of disagreement 
and contention, and so it ever has been. 

When, as we have seen, the new astronomy sup- 
planted the old ; when the new geology carried 
creation back a million, instead of six thousand 
years ; when evolution pushed aside the idea of 
separate and independent creations ; when the Bible 
began to be studied by the scientific method, as a 
book of literature, and when what is called the 
new theology, growing out of newer and better 
methods of investigation and interpretation began 
to be preached, in all these cases, and in others of 



AGENCIES FOR THE KINGDOM. 171 

lesser note, the Church took alarm and entered 
solemn protest. From her point of view, she could 
not have done otherwise. At first, the Church de- 
clared that these new doctrines were utterly false. 
"When this did not avail, it was declared that the 
Bible was being contradicted and destroyed, and 
that religion itself was in great peril. But, after- 
wards, when the new way of thinking came to be 
fully established and generally accepted, the 
Church, by some new processes of interpretation, 
adjusted herself to the situation, and suggested that 
these new views were of no consequence, that they 
were not new, and that the Church had always, for 
substance, held them. 

I am not complaining of the Church's attitude on 
questions of scientific advance. According to her 
method of accepting conclusions, largely on author- 
ity, she did the most natural thing possible, and she 
could not have done otherwise. The Church is 
right up to a certain point, and her only trouble is 
that her gospel is not large enough to meet the 
necessities of the case and the wants of the world. 
"What the Church needs is expansion of view and 
of life. Truth that rests on a scientific foundation 
must, in the end, prevail. I cannot recall a single 
historic record of any important conflict where 



172 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

science, on the one hand and the Church on the 
other, have been engaged, in which science was not 
victorious ; and this, in the interests of both truth 
and religion. Yet science is not religion and can- 
not be, until a certain heart quality, a loving acqui- 
escence, is added to that of cold intellectual appre- 
hension and assent. True religion is light and love 
combined. 

Between the gospel of the kingdom as Jesus saw, 
and, in principle, proclaimed it, and the onward 
march of true science, there is and there can be no 
real friction. Between science falsely so-called, and 
religion that is only such in name, there must be 
antagonisms. JSTor is the fault all on one side. 
Scientists are often as narrow, as imperious, as 
bigoted and sectarian as they charge Christians 
with being. People who live in glass houses had 
best not throw stones. "What the world needs most 
is a deep and sincere love of truth, regardless of 
the source whence it comes, and of the pathway 
along which it leads. Jesus said : Ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free. All 
truth is religious, because it is an emanation from 
God and leads back to the source whence it 
came. 

The gospel of the kingdom is the gospel of the 



AGENCIES FOB TEE KINGDOM. 173 

truth. It embraces all truth comprehensible by 
man and the privileges and duties into which truth 
leads the way. All knowledge, all science, all re- 
form, all religion, all that is useful and good in the 
world, belong to the gospel of the kingdom. 
The kingdom demands that science shall be 
religious, and that religion shall be scientific. 
When this demand is fulfilled, the two can 
no more antagonize than a house can be divided 
against itself, than one truth can contend against 
another. All truth is unified and centres in 
God. 

The conclusion of the whole chapter is this : 
That education as an uplifter, that art in its various 
forms, and that literature, in its profusion, are all 
broadening, enlightening and Christianizing the 
human mind ; that the spirit of invention, and in- 
vention itself, is inspiring and leading the world ; 
that science is unfolding the works of God and 
bringing nature and religion into a common fold ; 
and, finally, that all these influences combined with 
others, are drawing the Church and the world out 
of their narrowness and selfishness, through an 
open door, into the gospel of the kingdom, where 
God shall be all in all, and Jesus shall see of the 
travail of His soul and be satisfied. A long time 



174 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

may pass before the world reaches its goal. Evolu- 
tionary advances move slowly, — but they move; 
and the universality of the kingdom is as certain as 
that God is God. When the Gospel of the Church 
and the Gospel of the Kingdom become one, joined 
together in holy wedlock, then the day of the 
world's redemption draweth nigh. 



X. 

ALL THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD TO 

BE UNIFIED AND HARMONIZED IN 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 



X. 

ALL THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD TO BE UNI- 
FIED AND HARMONIZED IN THE GOSPEL OF 
THE KINGDOM. 

The history of religion as it has existed in the 
world, and in the hearts and lives of all men from 
the beginning, has never been written. It never 
can be fully written, — partly because of the vast- 
ness of the subject ; partly because no man is so 
free from prepossessions and prejudices as would 
enable him to write with perfect fairness and lucid- 
ity, upon every aspect of the great subject; and 
partly, because true religion is so personal, and so 
much of the heart rather than of the lip, that out- 
side reporters cannot discover its best qualities and 
reduce them to writing. Good people are always 
shy about opening their inner lives to the inspection 
of the outside world. 

As man's moral nature is the highest and noblest 
part of our common humanity, so, religion is the 
deepest and best of all earthly experiences. The 
body has its physical necessities; the intellect of 

177 



178 THE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM. 

man requires cultivation and enlargement through 
discipline and the acquisition of knowledge ; but 
man's moral nature that allies him to God, and 
through which he knows God and truth and duty, 
is the seat of religion. True religion is worship, is 
service of God and man, is good-will, and therefore, 
it must be higher and more sacred than any physical 
good, and growth of intellect, apart by themselves, 
can be. This explains why religion is the one 
fundamental and universal fact in the world's his- 
tory. The nature of man necessitates religion and 
clothes it with a sacredness and power that are never 
absent, and which nothing else can give or take 
away. 

And yet, religion more than anything else, unless 
it be the vaultings of human ambition, has been 
the great subject of contention and division among 
men. People always strive most about things that 
are dearest to them, and which they most value. 
At first glance, and even on closer observation, it 
would seem that the world is full of religions, all 
different in kind, and each clashing with the other. 
The adherents of every religion think their own 
the best and purest of all, at least, for those who 
embrace it, if not for the whole world. There are 
lords many and gods many ; and religion seems to 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 179 

be as diversified as are the different classes and 
races of men. Even among believers in the same 
system of religion, there often exist broad differ- 
ences of opinion, and divisions into sects and sec- 
tarian strifes, seemingly without limit. This is not 
only true of one system of religion, but of every 
system. All this goes to show that the work of 
evolutionary creation is not yet completed, that 
religion is still in its inchoate state ; but that all 
religions, high and low, are a search after God, and 
are leading directly or indirectly away from earth 
and self, towards and into the infinite and eternal, 
where alone the spirit of man can find rest. 

And yet, this apparent diversity and contradic- 
tion that we seem to find in the religions of man- 
kind are more seeming, more superficial and unim- 
portant than most people suppose them to be. A 
mere surface view sees little in common and much 
in discord. To some minds, when glancing over 
the field of the world, the whole question of relig- 
ion seems to be one of mystery, of uncertainty, of 
superstition and of endless contradictions that have 
but little, if any foundation in reality ; and so, they 
are at times inclined to cast off the whole subject 
as not worthy of serious attention. And yet, how- 
ever men may wish to think and do this, the thing 



180 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

is impossible ; for there is something that God has 
put in every human soul which tells him that 
religion is a deep and divine reality. It is some- 
thing that finds and holds him, struggle with or 
against, as he may. 

Eeligion is not that contradictory and superficial 
thing that, viewed casually, it often seems to be. 
As to fundamental and essential facts, all the relig- 
ions of the world, great and small, evolved or 
spiritually revealed, historic or otherwise, are essen- 
tially one and inseparable. Their differences relate 
to the scaffolding that has been built up around 
them, to the wood, hay and stubble that ignorance 
and tradition have wrought in with the precious 
stones and pure gold. We have only to cast off 
these useless and hurtful encumbrances and we 
shall find that the heart of every religion is true to 
the heart of every other. In non-essentials, they 
differ ; in essentials, they hold together as a mani- 
fold cord that cannot be broken. Let the correct- 
ness of this statement now be tested. 

"We have three things to consider, so far as space 
permits : 1. The peoples of the world in their 
relations to religion. 2. The religions which they 
profess and illustrate, and 3. The relation of these 
religions to the gospel of the kingdom. 



ALL TEE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 181 

If we look back to the dawn of history, we meet 
with the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyri- 
ans, the Aryans, and other peoples who lie more in 
the myths of uncertainty. However they severally 
differ in other respects, they all come together in 
the one great fact of earnest religiousness. Their 
religions differ widely in many things, but still, 
they are religions that the people of all classes love 
and cherish, and for which, if need be, they would 
lay down their lives. All these nations have their 
sacred writings, many of them brief, and graven on 
bricks, tiles and stones ; they have their priests and 
teachers, their temples and altars, their services 
and sacrifices, and their religious rites at the burial 
of the dead. Doubtless there were irreligious and 
profane people in those days, and unbelievers, as 
there have been in every age and nation since their 
day. Selfishness abounded then, as now. In that 
remote and early period people were not exempt 
from ignorance, error, superstition and general 
wickedness, any more, or as much, as they are now. 
One religion is apt to judge another, not by its ex- 
cellences, but by the evils with which it is more or 
less associated. Tried by this unfair standpoint, 
and every religion, Christianity not excepted, is 
doomed. The only point I now make is, that the 



182 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

people of those early nations were, according to 
the light they had, truly and earnestly religious. 

If we come down to later times, we meet the 
Greeks of different names, whose philosophers 
taught religion, whose art, of the highest order, 
was an expression of religious thought and feeling, 
and whose altars and temples are standing monu- 
ments of their sacrifices and devotion to their gods. 
Of the ancient Romans, almost the same words 
may be spoken. Their reverence for law was an 
element of their religion. 

Turn now to the living peoples of Asia, as the 
western world has come to know them in the last 
century. The Japanese, the Chinese and the peo- 
ple of India are more religious in their way — and 
they have much in common — than are the people 
of almost any Christian land. Their civilization is 
wholly different from ours. They care less for 
material things, they search less into the areana of 
nature, they are less rich and enterprising, but they 
worship their noble ancestors, they think of God 
and duty, and of great teachers, inspired men as 
they believe, who were forgetful of themselves and 
of the world, and were absorbed in a conscious 
sense of God's immanence in whom they lived and 
moved and had their being. 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 183 

Of the Mahometan world it may be said, that if 
the people are not religious, they are not anything ; 
and they are not ashamed of their religion. Watch 
them, wherever they may be, as, at the hour and 
call for prayer, they prostrate themselves in devout 
worship. If there be another side to their char- 
acter, as most people have more than one side, this 
does not change the fact of their re] igious devotion, 
and of their devotion to religion. I need not char- 
acterize Christian nations. We know what they 
are to their credit and to their discredit. It is 
enough to say that religion dwells among them, 
and that there are millions of devout worshipers. 
It is needless to go further to establish the great 
fact that religion is a characteristic of mankind. 
Man must worship ; God is in his nature and must, 
in some degree, be recognized and adored. 

We come now to inquire into the nature of the 
religions that prevail among the nations of the 
earth, past and present. Among them, Monothe- 
ism, Fetichism, Parse or Mageanism, Buddhism, 
Brahmanism, Polytheism, Judaism, Islamism and 
the Christianity of the Greek, Roman Catholic 
and Protestant Churches hold prominent posi- 
tions. It is not intended, nor is it necessary to 



184 TEE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

my present purpose, that these religions should 
each be studied separately. The great point I 
make is that, however much they may differ 
in unimportant and secondary matters, they all 
contain and emphasize most of the central prin- 
ciples and truths, imperfectly I admit, that must 
enter into and constitute the one universal religion 
that constitutes the gospel of the kingdom, which 
is, some day, to prevail in all the earth. Let me 
particularize : 

1. All these religions recognize and teach the 
existence of one supreme Being whom Christians 
call God. This conviction is the foundation on 
which all religion rests. Of course, it is not meant 
that all of these religions, or that any of them, 
fully comprehend God. The infinite is incompre- 
hensible to finite beings, except in some negative or 
partial sense. This fact explains the crude and 
wrong notions that have prevailed, and do still, as 
to the nature and character of God. It explains 
why men and religions have tried to find God by 
conceiving of Him as existing in finite forms, or as 
being represented in them. Sometimes God is 
personated in the heavenly bodies, at others, in 
heroes and great ancestors ; sometimes in rivers, in 
animals, and even, in blocks of wood and stone, and 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 185 

in pictures, as in some parts of Christendom. But 
the thing to be kept in mind is that, through it all, 
the Infinite One is recognized in every religion of 
the world, and, according to the light men have, 
God is feared and adored, if not obeyed. On this 
central fact of the universe, all men with insignifi- 
cant exceptions, stand on common ground. 

2. All religions not only have some code of 
morals, of ethical duties, which they deem to be 
obligatory, but, to a great extent they all have the 
same and a common code. Jesus was the best and 
the profoundest ethical teacher the world has ever 
known ; yet, there is not, probably, a precept upon 
man's duties to his fellow-man, in the four gospels, 
that is not duplicated, in word, or in substance, in 
the teachings of all, or nearly all, of the historic re- 
ligions that lie outside of Christendom. These 
precepts are, it is true, often mixed in with other 
things that, to us, seem puerile and very faulty ; but 
we must allow for the age, and darkness of the age, 
in which they were written ; and we must remem- 
ber also, that if the Christian religion were to be 
judged by all the absurd things that, at times, have 
been fastened upon it, it would fare as badly at the 
hands of Orientalists as their ethics do at ours. We 
are to judge of religions as of men, not by their worst 



186 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

but by their better features, a lesson that Christians 
need often to learn in dealing with religions and 
people other than their own. 

3. All religions have more than an ethical 
basis ; they are religions, and not mere intellections 
or formulas of morality. Most of them have their 
sacred books, written by inspired men, as they be- 
lieve ; Buddha, Zoroaster and Confucius are ex- 
amples. They hold these writings to be as sacred 
as we do our Bible ; and rightly they resent igno- 
rant attacks upon them, as if the devil were their 
author. 

In addition to teachers and books, all these re- 
ligions have shrines, altars, temples, sacrifices and 
holy services, that are as real and sacred to them 
as corresponding things are to Christian people. 
They believe in the awful fact of sin, in the need of 
repentance, of trust in God, in the law of love, and 
in good works, as we do ; and it is possible to find 
as devout and holy men and women in the Orient 
as Christian culture has produced. They are not as 
learned in many ways, and they may have things 
clinging to them which we could wish were not there; 
but their simplicity of character, heart sincerity and 
purity of purpose, can only be questioned by ignorance 
or by men of Pharisaic integrity. Much of the world 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 187 

that lies outside of Christendom is more religious, 
and more bold and outspoken in its devotional 
services, than is the greater part of the Christian 
world; and if we compare the best of one class 
with the poorest of the other, it would be hard to 
decide where superstition and ignorance most 
abounded. It is a better religion, rather than more 
of it, that is most needed. 

4. In particular, all religions teach alike the car- 
dinal doctrine of life after death. It is in human 
nature, in instinct and in intuition to believe this. 
Necessarily, all people have vague and crude ideas 
as to what the future world is like ; it lies outside 
the testimony of our senses. We have nothing to 
compare it with; and if we try to form definite 
conclusions about many things, we are only dream- 
ing and romancing, instead of standing on any re- 
liable evidence. This explains why it is that, in all 
lands, Christian and otherwise, there is so much of 
extravagance connected with the conception of life 
after death. Men have no real data for their con- 
clusions. But this does not change the main fact 
that all religions, and their adherents, believe alike, 
and with confidence, that when the body dies the 
spirit goes from it and lives on in the spirit world. 
Some of the ablest arguments for immortality have 



188 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

been written by men who lived before Christianity 
was born. Socrates, Plato and Cicero are shining 
examples. Death is but a change in life. 

5. Once more : All religions teach that char- 
acter and condition are inseparable. Holiness is 
allied to happiness, and sin to misery, by the 
changeless law of necessary sequence. If only the 
nature of true happiness, and of real misery is 
rightly understood, this law obtains alike in this 
world and that which is to come. The seen and 
the unseen are closely allied. The good are blessed 
and the bad are cursed ; it is so in the nature of 
things, wherever moral beings exist. This general 
statement all religions teach, and religionists of 
every sort believe in their hearts, and are ready to 
confess. They would be false to themselves, to 
God and the universe, if they did otherwise. 

The above specifications, while they are not ex- 
haustive of religious truth, involve the great under- 
lying doctrines of the universal religion. They are 
not exhaustive of Christianity. Nearly every relig- 
ion has some characteristic of its own. That which 
differentiates the Christian religion from every 
other is Jesus Christ, and that fulness of grace and 
truth and life that come to the world through Him 
more than through any other. Christ's gospel of 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 189 

the kingdom contains the truths and influences that 
must enter into, and dominate the religions of the 
world. Jesus revealed God as a God of love, and 
also, in His fatherly relations to man ; He revealed 
the fact and extent of human brotherhood, and ex- 
pounded the law of love as the central principle of 
the moral universe ; and these are surely the cen- 
tral truths of the universal religion, that are no- 
where else revealed as in the gospel of Christ's 
kingdom, and without which a religion suited to 
the whole human race is impossible. 

It is indeed the personality of Jesus Christ, — 
His personality impressed upon the whole Christian 
world, — that mainly constitutes Christianity and 
makes it what it is. Take Christ out of the system 
and what would then be left ? His is an ideal 
character which has not only held its place in the 
moral firmament through all the Christian centuries, 
but has been ever growing in brilliancy and power, 
until now, His influence in the whole religious 
world, and in the department of advanced civiliza- 
tion is greater than that of the founders of all other 
religions and philosophies combined. Buddha, 
Zoroaster, Confucius, Mahomet and the philosophers 
of Greece and Kome were noble characters, and they 
established religions that embody much of truth ; 



190 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

but their own personalities are not essential to the 
systems they represent, as Christ's personality is 
essential to the gospel of the kingdom of which He 
is the centre, soul and life. Take Jesus out of the 
gospel, and I repeat, there would be but little left 
to distinguish it from other historic religions older 
than Christianity and, perhaps, of larger following, 
but which have never succeeded in uplifting the 
world. Jesus Christ is the ideal character for all 
ages. What He has been in the past, He will con- 
tinue to be in the future, except that, as the world 
advances towards the universal religion, His in- 
fluence will steadily increase; and when the uni- 
versal religion and the gospel of the kingdom are 
merged in a common unity, it will still be found 
that Jesus Christ is the sun and centre around 
whom all peoples will gather and before whom all 
knees will bow as being the foremost revealer of 
God to man, of man to himself, and of that life 
eternal which is the hope and final destiny of mankind. 
And yet, every religion has some real contribu- 
tion to the great result towards which the world is 
moving, and every religion, as men now see it, has 
much useless and harmful material to throw off, as 
well as much to conserve. The loss and the gain 
come from every side. The gospel of the kingdom, 



ALL THE RELIGIONS TO BE UNIFIED. 191 

I repeat, has more to give, than it has to receive ; 
because, in addition to greater knowledge, greater 
energy, and a clearer vision of duty, it has the 
Christ of God, His personality, His life, His teach- 
ings, His promises and His spirit, to pour into the 
religions and the heart of the world ; so that in the 
final adjustment, when all religions shall have their 
just dues, and are merged and harmonized in a com- 
mon system, the gospel of the kingdom will be 
paramount, will be found to include what is good 
in all the others, and will have the willing and uni- 
versal acceptance of mankind. 

But before this great day arrives, there will be 
masterful struggle with environment. The process 
must be a steady growth, not one sharp battle, — a 
victory and a conquest. In this struggle, the his- 
toric religions will vie with each other, and do it 
honestly, for the mastery. The gospel will be car- 
ried to every land; and the religions outside of 
Christendom, believing that they have something 
to give, as well as to receive, will set up their ban- 
ners in Christian communities, as they are now do- 
ing in E"ew York city and elsewhere, to preach the 
doctrine of divine immanence and kindred truths as 
held by themselves, and held as being an advance 
upon Christian teachings on the same subjects. 



192 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Thus, from all sides the movement will go on as 
it is now going ; one worse than useless element 
will be dropped here, and another there ; denomi- 
nations and religions will come to understand each 
other better, will be drawn into closer relationships, 
will find that they have, after all, a common cause, 
and that division is a source of weakness, that in 
union is strength, that God in Christ is drawing all 
men, and all they possess, into the gospel of the 
kingdom ! Then will the struggle cease, harmony 
will be restored, the world saved and God's purpose 
be consummated. Towards this evolutionary re- 
sult all things are now tending, and the kingdom is 
the goal. 



XI. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM ON EAETH 
AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 



XI. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM ON EARTH AS IT IS 

IN HEAVEN. 

When a thoughtful traveler approaches, for the 
first time, some imposing scene in nature, — the 
Niagara Falls, the Yosemite Valley, the " Garden 
of the Gods," the Golden Gate, the Gorge of Phef- 
fers, or some snow-capped mountain range, — he in- 
stinctively pauses, as if on holy ground, that he 
may be prepared to comprehend, appreciate and de- 
scribe the great scene that is opening before him. 
So, the aged man, after a long and eventful life, 
when he finds himself standing on the verge of two 
worlds, glancing back over the past, and gleaming 
into the unseen beyond, comes to a solemn pause, 
that he may gain strength and preparation for the 
discoveries and glories that await his vision. If, in 
imagination, one were permitted to look off upon 
this world and beyond, into heaven, and discover 
that the kingdom had come alike in both, what a 
field of revelation and of wonders would come into 
view! 

195 



196 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

First of all he would be amazed at the wonderful 
changes that had come over the whole earth ; and 
almost equally, because of striking likenesses be- 
tween the two worlds. Heaven itself would be an 
amazement to him, as it will be to all of us when 
we enter it from our earthly homes. At first, no 
one thing in particular would strike his vision, for 
all things would have been made new ; the holy 
city would have come down out of heaven, and 
there would be a new heaven and a new earth, and 
God's tabernacle would be with men. Old things 
would then have passed away, and all that the eye 
could rest upon would seem as strange and wonder- 
ful as they were new. He would see that the end 
for which the human race was created, but which 
had been veiled from view, had now, indeed, come. 
Many great problems that were once thought to be 
insolvable, will then have reached solution. The 
mystery of moral evil, of human struggle and of 
slow progress will then be explained. The intel- 
lectual world may not be disentangled from error, 
and the search after truth may be intensified ; but 
the moral and spiritual world will be at rest, be- 
cause of the love and unfaltering trust that will 
then everywhere prevail. 

Eot only will this earth and the life upon it, in 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN EEA VEN. 197 

that day, appear in a new light, but heaven itself 
of which this world will then be the counterpart, 
will have emerged from the mists that now envelop 
it, into the light of almost clear vision. We shall 
then have a new heaven as well as a new earth. 

One of the first great facts then to be established 
beyond doubt, will be the cardinal fact of continued 
conscious life after physical death. While a gen- 
eral belief has ever prevailed that death " does not 
end all," yet this conclusion has never had the 
support of scientific, or of demonstrated certainty. 
Men have tried to prove what, by argument was 
never satisfactorily proven, and by that process 
alone, never can be. Only a clear consciousness of 
God and of life in Him, such as will be general 
when the gospel of the kingdom is established on 
earth as it is in heaven, can give assurance of 
eternal life. In this life, and in the ethereal world 
alike, the proof of immortality is a vital union and 
oneness with God as He is revealed to us in Jesus 
Christ. All this is clearly apprehended in heaven, 
and it will be on earth, when heaven and earth be- 
come one in thought, feeling, purpose and life ; as, 
in that " good time coming " they will be. 

And yet, in one respect, at least, heaven and 
earth must ever widely differ. In this world, as 



198 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

we have seen, physical life abounds, and in the 
ethereal world, spiritual life superabounds ; and the 
two are widely different. Here, we have each of 
us two bodies, a physical and a spiritual, one dwell- 
ing in the other ; and that change which we call 
death relates to the physical body only. The 
spirit never dies; it only changes habitation and 
environments. Heaven and earth are nearer each 
other than we think. Heaven is more an experience 
than a place, so that when the spirit rises above the 
body and lives with and in God, there is heaven, 
whether it be on earth or beyond. Still, physical 
nature, however sanctified, is physical and not 
ethereal ; it is a thing of sense, the shadow of things 
to come. 

This distinction between the two worlds, — of 
body and spirit, — is so fundamental that we cannot 
reason from one to the other, as otherwise might 
be possible. General facts and principles apply to 
all moral beings wherever they exist. Beyond this, 
we on earth have no data, no clearly defined ideals 
that enable us fully to map out and describe the 
spirit world ; and when we try to do so, we make 
it physical and not spiritual, and so we mistake 
imagination for reality. 

But this one fundamental point of difference be- 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEA VEN. 199 

tween earth redeemed from sin, and heaven, must not 
be so magnified as to shut out from view great 
matters in which the two worlds will then be 
essentially alike. God is the central fact, the all 
and in all of both worlds. What the light of the 
sun is to this earth, God is to heaven, and would be 
to us, if we had heavenly vision. How the spirits 
of the just made perfect see God, we do not know. 
Physical eyes like ours they cannot possess, but 
they have a spiritual vision that far exceeds human 
capability. Man has, I believe, in this life, some 
rudimental elements of spiritual vision, and it is 
through this occult power, partially developed, that 
some persons on earth see God and have heavenly 
visions. When the kingdom comes on earth as it is 
in heaven, it is probable that the vision of saints 
below, and of saints above, will be more alike than 
they are now. At any rate, in both worlds, God 
will then be the one great personality, of whom all 
will be conscious, and whom they will adore and 
serve as the sum and source of all good. His will 
is their law. 

This brings me to say that in heaven, and on 
earth, when it becomes heavenly, something in the 
nature of law and government will still exist. 
Government, as we now see and understand it, is 



200 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

unknown in heaven, and when earth and heaven 
are one in spirit and in life, government, in its pres- 
ent form, will be unknown everywhere. The one 
eternal law of the moral universe, and so of heaven 
and earth, is the law of love. Around this one 
commandment, — Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, — all 
true and enduring government centres. Love is 
the fulfilling of the law. He that loveth is born of 
God and knoweth God. He that loveth not is of 
the devil. 

Doubtless, in heaven there are simple and natural 
arrangements for different classes of service, and 
for the orderly carrying out of the law of love. 
On earth, when the kingdom shall have come, it 
will be essentially the same. Such orderly arrange- 
ments as the law of love may suggest, or make neces- 
sary, will be established and observed. But every 
organization and operation that is based on selfish- 
ness, or that selfishness demands, will have passed 
away. This means that the whole world will be 
one ; that national antagonisms, if not their separate 
existence, that all war measures, all protective 
tariffs, all gigantic monopolies, and everything not 
in harmony with the law of love will have passed 
away, and that such government as remains will be 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HE A VEN. 201 

heavenly ; that is to say, it will be a government of 
love and nothing else. 

This is not to claim that in the great day com- 
ing, when love is law and law is love, that there 
will not remain, both on earth and in heaven, large 
fields of ignorance, of mystery, and of consequent 
mistaken apprehension. Perfectness of love which 
is the only perfection possible to finite beings, does 
not mean perfectness of judgment ; if it did, then it 
would mean omniscience, which is an attribute of 
God only. Doubtless, in heaven knowledge will be 
more extensive than it ever can be in this world. 
Some persons appear to think that there can be no 
ignorance, no real mystery, and no mistake in 
heaven. Far otherwise. The highest archangel 
knows infinitely less than infinite, and, conse- 
quently, in many directions must be in attitudes of 
uncertainty and of profound mystery. 

If this be true in heaven, how much more must 
it be true on earth, even in the light of the king- 
dom. The advance in knowledge that has come to 
men in the last one thousand, or even, one hundred 
years is immense ; and, as the world moves on 
towards the kingdom it will increase more and 
more. When prejudice and prepossession shall 
have disappeared and when all men shall become 



202 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

honest and earnest seekers after truth, and in all 
directions, and for the sake of the general good, as 
they will do in the kingdom, then, as compared 
with now, the world will be full of light on all sub- 
jects. And yet, even then, science will be only in 
the vestibule of God's infinite temple of living 
truth. Then, as now, in directions where it might 
seem that all darkness had fled away, a deeper in- 
sight into mystery would reveal the shallowness of 
human knowledge. 

If knowledge is to be limited in heaven and on 
earth, when earth becomes heavenly, then in both 
worlds there must be wide differences of opinion, 
and earnest discussion on many great questions. 
There and then, as here and now, the same subject 
will be seen by men and angels from different 
points of view ; and although both sides may be 
partly right and partly wrong, they must, of ne- 
cessity, often reach different conclusions. What 
may seem truth to one, may be the opposite of 
truth to another ; and so very earnest and pro- 
longed discussions and differences of opinion may 
exist in heaven. 

But such disagreements would not be conducted 
as they now are on earth. The disputants there, 
and in both worlds, are sanctified beings ; they live 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HE A VEN. 203 

up to the light that is given them, and the law of 
love rules every heart, so that differences do not 
beget alienation, strife, and division into parties 
end sects, as they do here. There is no denoraina- 
tionalisni or sectarianism in heaven, and there will 
be none on earth, when the gospel of the kingdom 
comes on earth as it is in heaven. Unity of spirit, 
oneness with God, and a life of love, — these, and 
not uniformity of belief, even upon great subjects, 
are what make heaven harmonious and fill it with 
the divine fullness. Were it otherwise, even 
heaven itself would be a place of discord. So long 
as finite beings are finite, there must be among 
them, if they are reflective and progressive, di- 
vergencies of thought and conclusion. In the 
nature of things it cannot be otherwise. 

If all this be accepted as true, then it follows 
that the standard of estimate in heaven and on 
earth when the kingdom is established here as 
there, must be very different from the standards 
that now, with us, are for the most part used to 
measure values. With us, money or its equivalent 
is the chief standard of measurement. One rich 
man outweighs a hundred of the unfortunate 
poor. If one wishes to know the value of his 
neighbor, he asks, How much is he worth? and 



204 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

if he is worth a million dollars, or only one hun- 
dred, he is valued accordingly. There are other 
standards equally absurd that suggest themselves. 

In heaven, worth as to moral character, and not 
wealth as to possessions, measures the place one is 
to hold in any and every department of life, and 
the day is coming when this will be the human 
standard as well. And this standard of worth 
versus wealth will be carried, with approving glad- 
ness, into every human relationship. This surely is 
God's standard, and why should it not be ours ? 
Who is most likely to be mistaken, God or man ? 
As the kingdom advances, the world will approach 
the heavenly standard of estimate, and what a 
changed world we shall have when that standard 
is universally adopted ! 

It does not follow that when the standard of 
estimate on earth and in heaven are one, that all 
social distinctions, personal preferences and natural 
affinities will cease to exist. We may love truly, 
as God loves, persons whom we would not care to 
select as our most intimate and lifelong associates. 
There, as here, " birds of a feather flock together," 
so that beings who are similar in temperament, in 
talent, in taste and in occupation will be more to 
each other than they could be if they were oppo- 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HE A VEN. 205 

sites in all these respects. Occupations, and train- 
ing for special occupations, and natural adaptations 
differ in heaven as they do, and ever must on earth. 
Some are born poets, while others are didactic and 
prosaic in their nature ; some are lovers of philos- 
ophy ; some find truth and God through the intel- 
lect, and others through the sensibility or the 
imagination. Some are social and communicative, 
while others are silent and reflective ; some study 
theology and others natural science ; some are 
practical, and others theoretic ; but all, in degrees, 
live spiritual lives. So it is on earth, and so it will 
be in heaven. As a result, persons and spirits of 
like sympathies will be drawn together and form 
circles and classes in part, by themselves. Not 
selfishness, but intuition and affinity lead to this, 
and so prepare the way for every line of useful 
and holy work to be better done both on earth and 
in heaven. 

Progression, onward and ever onward, must then 
be the motto and experience of the heavenly life, 
and of life in the perfected gospel of the kingdom 
on earth. Ignorance necessitates progress. The 
spirit of man is an emanation from God. It has 
something of divinity in it. It bears the divine 
impress and is susceptible of divine inspiration. 



206 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

It is endowed with a longing desire for knowledge. 
Even in this materialistic and selfish age, the world 
is ever making new discoveries ; and when it shall 
have advanced into the gospel of the kingdom, this 
thirst for knowledge, and success in finding it, will 
be far greater than ever before. And in the glori- 
fied heaven, where spirit vision is substituted for 
physical, and the powers of the soul are greatly- 
intensified and enlarged, knowledge will be at- 
tained more easily and rapidly than is possible to 
man in his earthly habitation. 

And what infinite fields for investigation are 
open in all directions ! The world has already 
learned much, and yet we can go but a step any- 
where without finding ourselves in the presence of 
unanswerable questions. If we ask what is light ? 
What is heat ? What is electricity ? What is 
gravitation ? What is matter ? What is spirit ? 
What is life ? What is death ? and a thousand 
other such questions, no man living can answer 
them. The field for study is as infinite as God, 
and space, and duration are infinite. The further 
one advances, the wider is the unexplored field, 
and the more one has to learn. 

When the mountain climber is ascending some 
height, he sees nothing beyond; but on reaching 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 207 

the summit, he discovers in the blue distance, and 
in all directions, other summits higher than his 
own, to be explored. Peaks on peaks and Alps 
on Alps arise. So it must ever be on earth and in 
heaven. Let men and angels progress in knowl- 
edge, physical, ethical, theological and spiritual, 
as they may, and let their longings for truth, and 
their inspirations and successes be what they may, 
still, their advances will be as nothing compared 
with the infinities that lie beyond. Onward progress 
will be forever the law and experience of all dwellers 
in the kingdom, whether on earth or beyond. 

An experience such as the gospel of the kingdom 
ensures must be one of satisfaction and of great 
blessedness, because it is one of conformity with 
the will of God, and so, of moral perfection. Ideal 
perfection belongs only to God. Finite beings are 
perfect when they obey the call of duty and privi- 
lege and have their life hid with Christ in God. 
This state on earth and in heaven is one of bless- 
edness. Some appear to think that blessedness and 
sorrow, pleasure and grief, are incompatible, and 
cannot dwell together in the same life. It is not 
so with God who grieves over the sins of men, nor 
with Jesus, who was touched with the feeling of 
our infirmities, who bore our sicknesses, and who 



208 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

died for us that we might live. A mother's suffer- 
ing for a child, a wife's sympathy with a pain- 
stricken husband, a daughter's anguish at the bed- 
side of a dying father, are all painful; but they 
would not, through absence or ignorance, have it 
otherwise. There is often happiness in suffering 
that brings deep peace of soul which the world can 
neither give nor take away. If this be so on earth, 
how much more in heaven. To live fully in the 
gospel of the kingdom is highest blessedness, and 
this, regardless of environment. 

It is the hope and belief of the Christian world, 
that when spirits from the earthly kingdom pass 
over into the heavenly, that they will meet, recog- 
nize, and in proportion as character and condition 
permit, associate with the spirits of loved ones who 
shall have gone on before. Spiritual communion 
in Christ's earthly kingdom will, in that day, be 
intimate and precious, and how much more so will 
it be in heaven. This thought and anticipation has 
comforted millions of weary souls as they journeyed 
through their earthly pilgrimage to the home of 
the blessed. " We shall meet in heaven," are the 
words spoken on dying beds, and what would life 
be without such anticipation ; or heaven itself, with- 
out its realization ! 



ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HE A VEN. 209 

I cannot and would not avoid the belief that 
when the gospel of the kingdom is established on 
earth as it is in heaven, that a closer and more 
conscious relationship will be established between 
dwellers in the two worlds than has ever yet ex- 
isted. Even now, it is said, that the angels and 
redeemed ones encamp around us and help to shape 
our thoughts, lives and destinies. What we accept 
on faith, now, may have demonstrative certainty 
then. It is undeniable that the signs of the times 
look in that direction. But what, and how, all 
this that has the support of probability is to be in 
experience, only the future can fully disclose. If 
it be God's will that earth and heaven shall meet 
together in conscious fellowship, it will come to 
pass. 

The points of resemblance and of separation be- 
tween earth and heaven as they will appear when 
the gospel of the kingdom is fully established, have 
now passed in review. That Christ's kingdom will 
some day come on earth as it is in heaven, is the 
burden of this book, and has been the inspiration 
and hope of the ages. That it will come, and how 
it will come, I, for one, have not a shadow of doubt. 
But what mighty overturnings and changes in all 
directions must take place as the inhabitants of 



210 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

earth, churches, religions, men of business, and 
nations break from their old moorings, and sail over 
boisterous seas, into the harbor of the gospel king- 
dom ! Such a glorious ending is worthy of all the 
toil, suffering, struggle and death that have been 
experienced through all the centuries of that slow, 
upward movement, that God alone could compre- 
hend and control. He saw the end from the be- 
ginning and willed it. What may lie beyond our 
open vision, God and heaven only can reveal. 



XII. 

SUMMAEY AND CONCLUSION. 



XII. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

One great practical purpose for which this book 
is written, and that has ever been kept in view, is, 
the enlargement of the ideal of religion ; and such 
an enlargement as shall make it to include the 
whole, and not a part only of human activity and 
life. One of the greatest mistakes ever made by 
man consists in dividing human life into two great 
sections, one of which is called religious, and the 
other secular, and apart from religion. Attending 
and supporting the Church, giving to religious in- 
stitutions, reading the Bible, prayer, outward 
observances and a few other such things are often 
thought to constitute the whole of religion ; and it 
is assumed that secular life, — which is made to in- 
clude business of all kinds, politics, recreation and 
the whole round of sports and pleasures, — lies 
wholly outside of religion. This view shuts off 
from religious responsibility, privilege and duty, 
the greater part of human life. A more monstrous 
and fatal heresy never possessed the minds and 

hearts of men ! If, by any manipulation, such a 

213 



214 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

view can seem to harmonize with the gospel of the 
Church, it surely is in direct contradiction of the 
gospel of the kingdom which demands that whether 
we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, all must be 
done to the glory of God. While I would not 
claim that one day, or one class of actions can be 
no more sacred than another, it must yet be in- 
sisted upon that every day and every act of life does 
something to make and mould moral character, and 
should be regarded as religious, and should be regu- 
lated by religious principle. Man's whole life, and in 
one department equally with another, should be in 
perfect conformity with the law of love, supreme 
towards God and impartial towards man. This is 
the law of the kingdom, and is the central law of 
the moral universe. It is that on which all just 
law and good government is suspended. Love is 
the fulfilling of the law, so that whatever is apart 
from love is apart from the gospel of the kingdom. 
This then, is the conception of religion that 
underlies all of the preceding chapters, and which I 
would, in these concluding words, emphasize as 
fundamental principles of the gospel of the king- 
dom. If the true idea of religion does not embrace 
and control the entire life of man, then, it is a 
house divided against itself and cannot stand. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 215 

The central purpose of the whole book, I repeat, 
is to show that the gospel of the kingdom, which 
reaches and controls the whole of human life, is 
some day, to come on earth as it is in heaven, and 
to note the steps by which it is to be accomplished. 
The proof of all this may be further unified and 
accentuated by a brief summary of the chapters 
that lead up to, and assure, so great and glorious a 
consummation. 

We have seen that the idea of a kingdom, in 
which God is sovereign, and man subject, is as old 
as the human race. It was cherished by the oldest 
nations, and is fundamental in the Old Testament 
Scriptures. This doctrine of the kingdom was the 
great theme of our Lord's preaching ; and the prin- 
ciples He taught were so broad as to include in that 
gospel every agency and instrumentality, that 
works, or should work, towards the elevation and 
spiritual life of the world. 

We have seen that, and how, this great concep- 
tion of the gospel of the kingdom came to be set 
aside or narrowed down to the smaller conception 
of the gospel of the Church ; all because the apostles 
and their associates were not able fully to compre- 
hend their Master's meaning when He spoke so con- 
stantly of the kingdom. We have traced the ad- 



216 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

vantages and disadvantages of this transfer; its 
advantages being that the world was not then pre- 
pared to apprehend more than was contained in the 
gospel of the Church ; and that the preaching of 
that gospel, from apostolic times till now, has re- 
sulted in incalculable blessings to mankind ; while 
at the same time, the transfer has led to vast evils. 
It laid the foundation for a narrow, rigid ecclesias- 
ticism that darkened the early centuries ; and it 
formed narrow creeds that were divisive in tend- 
ency, and that in the end, split the Church, that 
should always have been one, into a thousand rival 
and contending fragments. 

We have further seen that the time must come 
when the gospel of the kingdom will be restored 
to its rightful place as Jesus conceived it. Then, 
will the Church, in all its branches, the wealth and 
good influences of the world, and the nations of 
the earth, all flow into the kingdom, and establish 
it on earth as it is in heaven. Reasons were given 
for this expectation. This great change, it was 
seen, is not to be brought about suddenly, or by 
violence, but is to be a growth, by creative 
energy, under the operation of God's central law of 
evolution that works silently, but never fails to 
reach its end. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 217 

Then, we considered the great struggle and crisis 
that is coming upon the twentieth century ; and the 
crucial questions, full of portent, that the growth 
of the world is bringing to our doors, and that 
must be settled, and settled rightly, if this century 
is to lead on into the kingdom. The place and im- 
portance that the growing view of Divine imma- 
nence, and of God-consciousness was to hold in the 
great movement heavenward, was next considered. 
The religious and benevolent enterprises of the 
world, emanating largely from the Church, such as 
the Church itself, eleemosynary institutions, Chris- 
tian missions, Home and Foreign, Sunday-Schools, 
and Young People's Societies for Christian work 
were studied as augmenting the flow-tide that 
sweeps into the kingdom. To the same end, other 
agencies, almost wholly outside of the Church, such 
as schools, art, invention, literature, and the growth 
of natural science, were considered and found to 
belong largely to the gospel of the kingdom. 

The various religions of the world came under 
review ; and it was seen that, while all of them con- 
tained much that was temporary, still, they all 
embodied the great principles of the universal re- 
ligion ; and that the gospel of the kingdom, with 
Christ made prominent, is to be established in all 



218 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGD03I. 

the earth. Then comes the closing chapter de- 
scriptive of the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. 
Surely, the theme is an inspiring one, and, if its 
treatment, owing in part, at least, to the wear and 
weight of many gladsome years, is not equal to the 
demand, it may, perchance, open windows through 
which other minds may discover truths that the 
writer's dimness of vision did not enable him to see, 
except in golden vision. 



MA* l 



3 1 



MAR 13 1902 

iCOKttfcL. T6CAT.0IV, 
MAR. 13 1902 



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